To the Cloud & back again. Is Open Source the key to Digital Sovereignty?

26/09/2025

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At Red Hat Connect Brussels, Peter Dens, Managing Partner at Kangaroot, addressed one of Europe’s most pressing technology issues: digital sovereignty. He warned that three hyperscale providers now control roughly two-thirds of the global cloud market and hold the vast majority of the world’s data – a concentration that raises legal, security and strategic concerns for European organisations.

Peter explained that open source software and open standards offer a practical route to regain control. By building on technologies such as Kubernetes, Linux and Red Hat OpenShift, organisations can avoid vendor lock-in, adapt systems to local compliance rules and maintain sovereignty over critical infrastructure.

He urged companies to classify workloads by importance, invest in automation and containerisation, and design systems to be portable between providers.

Being able to move workloads within weeks rather than months is the real benchmark

Peter illustrated this approach with recent Kangaroot projects, from a Dutch city migrating off Azure to an open source platform to an international NGO rebuilding its collaboration tools with full control over data flows.

Security was another key theme: many widely used security tools are owned outside Europe, and Kangaroot has responded with open source based security offerings and local partnerships to give customers more transparency and expertise.

Closing his session, Peter called on European organisations to start preparing now by mapping their assets, assessing criticality and building in flexibility.