SAP to Invest $23 Billion in Europe Sovereign Cloud

German software giant SAP announced Tuesday (Sept. 2) that it is investing 20 billion euros ($23.3 billion) to expand its “sovereign cloud” services as it bets on Europe’s desire to keep its data within its borders.

The new investment underpins an expanded SAP Sovereign Cloud portfolio, which gives European customers access to a full technology stack while keeping sensitive data under local control, compliant with European regulations.

The investment spans a decade, according to a Tuesday CNBC report.

Unlike global public clouds run by providers such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure or Google Cloud, which often distribute data across international data centers, a sovereign cloud is built to keep data and workloads within a country or region, operating under local laws.

The approach has grown in importance as European regulators tighten rules around data privacy and security through frameworks like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the EU AI Act.

SAP’s expanded offering includes an Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) platform built with open-source technologies and hosted entirely within EU-based data centers. SAP is also offering to operate cloud infrastructure directly in a customer’s own or chosen data center, and introduced a Germany-specific cloud, Delos Cloud, designed to meet German rules.

SAP’s push reflects a broader trend among cloud providers. In July, AWS announced that it was launching a new sovereign cloud for Europe by the end of the year

In June, Microsoft introduced its sovereign public cloud offering for all European data center regions. The company said the data stays in Europe, complies with European laws and is controlled by European personnel. This follows its EU Data Boundary completion in February.

In May, Google Cloud also announced a data boundary service that lets clients control where their content is stored and processed. It rolled out Google Cloud Dedicated to meet local sovereignty requirements and Google Cloud Air-Gapped for intelligence, defense and sensitive sectors.