The global and independent platform for the SAP community.

Digital Sovereignty Is A Necessity, Not a Luxury

Digital sovereignty is rapidly gaining in importance in Europe. This is creating new requirements—and opportunities—for SAP customers. Open source plays a key role in this and helps companies to become more sovereign.
Patricia Buchholz, Suse
October 2, 2025
avatar
This text has been automatically translated from German to English.

Increasing EU regulation, geopolitical tensions and dependence on non-European hyperscalers are increasing the pressure on companies to take a strategic approach to digital sovereignty. SAP customers face the challenge of operating business-critical workloads in a secure, compliant and future-proof manner. The good news is that open source is the key to greater control, flexibility and security. Sovereignty is not a product, but a strategy. It describes the ability to exercise control over data, infrastructure and software independently of providers or countries.

For SAP customers, this means that they need to understand where their data is stored, who can access it and how their systems would behave under changed conditions. To support customers and partners in this, Suse has developed a multi-stage implementation model: the Cycle of Digital Sovereignty. It is not a product, but a holistic approach that integrates architecture, open source, compliance and operability.

Four phases to sovereign IT

Suse recommends a structured approach to achieve sovereign IT. In the planning phase, stakeholders should be involved, regulatory requirements analyzed, software supply chains checked and workloads classified. This is followed by the implementation phase, in which sovereign architecture models are evaluated and open source technologies are used in a targeted manner. The third phase, validation, involves testing business continuity plans with regard to technology survivability. Finally, integration should take place, in which sovereignty is established as a continuous process. This approach is particularly relevant for SAP customers with hybrid or multi-cloud environments, as a sovereign architecture offers both security and freedom of action.

Suse is committed to the promotion of open technologies throughout Europe. As an official supporter of OpenForum Europe, Suse contributes its experience to the political discourse, for example at the EU Open Source Policy Summit. The aim is to create sustainable framework conditions for open source and to enable digital sovereignty across the board. SAP landscapes have long relied on open source technologies - from Linux and containers to automation. This makes the professional, continuous operation of these components all the more important. Suse follows the principle of security and upstream first: security updates and innovations flow directly into the upstream projects and are secured via our own enterprise services. For SAP customers, this means maximum compatibility with minimum risk.

Sovereign support from Europe

With Suse Sovereign Premium Support, Suse offers a new service package especially for sovereign IT environments. It includes personal support engineers and service delivery managers based exclusively in the EU. All support data is stored and encrypted within the EU. Another advantage is the familiarity with local compliance requirements. Especially for SAP customers with high compliance requirements - for example in the public sector or defense - this means an additional level of security. According to IDC, over 80 percent of European companies are planning to use sovereign cloud offerings by 2025.

SAP managers should analyze their system landscape: Where are the systems running, under what conditions, with what dependencies? The goal: a secure, compliant and innovative infrastructure. Suse supports this with tools, consulting and technologies such as Suse Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications, Suse Rancher for SAP applications or Suse Security - supplemented by the new Sovereign Premium Support. Digital sovereignty is more than compliance - it ensures resilience, innovation and independence. Open source offers SAP customers the opportunity to retain control and act flexibly at the same time.

To the partner entry:

avatar
Patricia Buchholz, Suse


Write a comment

Working on the SAP basis is crucial for successful S/4 conversion. 

This gives the Competence Center strategic importance for existing SAP customers. Regardless of the S/4 Hana operating model, topics such as Automation, Monitoring, Security, Application Lifecycle Management and Data Management the basis for S/4 operations.

For the second time, E3 magazine is organizing a summit for the SAP community in Salzburg to provide comprehensive information on all aspects of S/4 Hana groundwork.

Venue

FourSide Hotel Salzburg,
Trademark Collection by Wyndham
Am Messezentrum 2, 5020 Salzburg, Austria
+43-66-24355460

Event date

Wednesday, June 10, and
Thursday, June 11, 2026

Regular ticket

EUR 590 excl. VAT

Venue

Hotel Hilton Heidelberg
Kurfürstenanlage 1
D-69115 Heidelberg

Event date

Wednesday, April 22 and
Thursday, April 23, 2026

Tickets

Regular ticket
EUR 590 excl. VAT
Subscribers to the E3 magazine
reduced with promocode STAbo26
EUR 390 excl. VAT
Students*
reduced with promocode STStud26.
Please send proof of studies by e-mail to office@b4bmedia.net.
EUR 290 excl. VAT
*The first 10 tickets are free of charge for students. Try your luck! 🍀
The event is organized by the E3 magazine of the publishing house B4Bmedia.net AG. The presentations will be accompanied by an exhibition of selected SAP partners. The ticket price includes attendance at all presentations of the Steampunk and BTP Summit 2026, a visit to the exhibition area, participation in the evening event and catering during the official program. The lecture program and the list of exhibitors and sponsors (SAP partners) will be published on this website in due course.