Proximus partners with Google Cloud and LuxConnect to provide sovereign cloud services

Over the last few years, there’s been a growing concern that EU member states, businesses, and citizens are losing control over their data, hindering security, innovation, and digital autonomy. This concern has flourished into new regulations and digital strategies concerning security, data privacy, and cloud sovereignty. Objectives surrounding these topics are outlined within the European Commission’s Data Strategy, Digital Strategy, Industrial Strategy, and the EU recovery plan.

An example of one such objective is embedded in the EC’s European strategy for data aiming to create “a single market for data that will ensure Europe’s global competitiveness and data sovereignty.” The Data Governance Act further cites the objective for businesses and citizens to keep control of the data they generate while investments made into their collection are safeguarded.

As more governments, businesses, and citizens adopt cloud technology for data storage, disaster recovery, flexibility, reliability, cost savings, and more, it is key for European countries to ensure higher standards of control and security, as data residency can be a grey area. Data and cloud sovereignty come into play as it deals with which laws and regulations apply to the data based on where it resides. As such, there is a real need and demand for these types of sovereign IT services where Proximus, the Belgian telco and IT provider, aims to play a crucial role in the BeLux region.

Proximus is not the first of its kind to offer sovereign cloud services in Europe, however, it is the first to deliver Google Distributed Cloud Hosted - a disconnected sovereign cloud solution (bypasses the need for connectivity to Google Cloud for managing infrastructure, services, APIs, or tooling) in Belgium and Luxembourg with LuxConnect, a data center service provider owned by the Luxembourg state, supporting Proximus in bringing these sovereign cloud solutions to life.

Proximus, Google Cloud, and LuxConnect will work closely over the next five years to ensure full operational sovereignty for public and private-sector organizations’ secure deployment of sensitive and mission-critical workloads. This will enable greater customer control and transparency for migrating sensitive data to the cloud.

The partnership with Google and LuxConnect will also enable Proximus to leverage its domain expertise and cloud services to further complement and extend disconnected cloud services in the region.