“Sovereign”: I can’t stand that word!

"Sovereign": I can’t stand that word! I do not know exactly when and how this idea began to take root and rot the IT sector from within, but it is time to put an end to this madness!

Worse still, the "sovereign cloud": just reading it makes me shudder with irritation… Why? Because it rests on the false, biased idea that a service’s country of origin should be a primary factor in deciding whether to use it.

Make no mistake: I use the "sovereign" cloud (a rather grand word for an expatriate like me…). Not for its "sovereignty", but simply for criteria that apparently count for so little today, such as:

– the quality of the products and services,
– how well the offering meets my needs,
– the prices on offer…

Many people emphasise the extra "security" these offerings supposedly provide. Yet anyone who has done serious work in security knows that, apart from a few sensitive institutions or organisations (for which the very idea of outsourcing, locally or otherwise, should be ruled out), our adversaries are most often right here, close to us…

Ask yourself this question: which state or government is most likely to threaten you or your activities "tomorrow"?

I think it is essential to recognise that, apart from the exceptions above, a service should never be assessed on the basis of sovereignty, which is itself relative and changes with each takeover.

Quality, security, reliability, availability, flexibility, freedom, long-term viability: these are some of the criteria that should guide our choices and our investments.

Since the vast majority of French cloud providers lined up to spam us with "sovereignty" across every media outlet, AWS has broken every adoption record in France. Correlation or consequence: this strategy is not paying off! So why insist on charging headlong into the sovereign wall?

It is time to leave this obsolete concept behind us (all the cutting-edge components are manufactured in Asia by machines designed in Europe…).

Neither geography nor any regulation can guarantee your security or independence: only the technical and operational measures actually put in place can.

I think we would be wiser to focus on those concrete measures.

Finally, on the underlying issue: does it make sense to reinforce, in cyberspace, concepts that cause wars in the physical world, instead of preserving the values and principles of openness that made it strong? Do you really think that sovereignty is worth what it costs you?

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