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Data sovereignty. A simple notion, right? Not so fast.

What may appear to be a relatively straightforward concept has instead become an extremely complicated situation due to the numerous regulations defined, countless re-purposed terms used, and variety of technology capabilities offered. This reality has an impact downstream in the form of significant considerations and ramifications for public and private organizations alike. To begin to simplify this complexity, let’s start with the definition of the parts that make up the whole of digital sovereignty.

Defining Digital Sovereignty

First, let’s discuss data sovereignty and data residency. These two terms are often combined and intermingled into a single statement that can introduce confusion right off the bat.

If no jurisdiction is involved, then data residency is the proper term as it is simply ensuring that the data — and the processing of that data — sits within an explicit geographical location. However, if the data is subject to exclusive legal protections within a particular jurisdiction of a nation, this is a matter of data sovereignty.

Data sovereignty is the ability to maintain legal control and authority of data within a defined nation’s jurisdictional boundaries. This includes data flows and subsequent processing of that data located within the jurisdictional boundary in question. This also includes any additional data and metadata created by the processing of the original data that falls under this same jurisdictional requirement.

While it may come naturally to focus on the data — and the technology that creates it —the topic of data sovereignty extends well beyond data and technology to encompass data privacy, human rights, national identity, national security, a nation’s digital capability, the value of data, the data economy and — ultimately — economic growth.

The jurisdictional boundary can be extended across national borders to encompass the full scope of a legal entity. A prime example is the grouping of political territories such as the European Union (EU) and legal bodies within the EU such as the European Commission (EC) and the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU). Member states, such as Germany or France and their respective governments and judiciaries, would have their own jurisdictions in addition to that of the EU bodies.

Data sovereignty is not the same as digital sovereignty. Rather, data sovereignty is merely a subset of the desire to achieve digital sovereignty. Beyond the data, digital sovereignty is about achieving digital autonomy across the entire end-to-end ecosystem and infrastructure, including hardware, software, identities, access, data processing capabilities, data security and infrastructure cyber resilience.

With this in mind, a sovereign cloud is one that supports the destination of digital sovereignty, but does not, itself, provide data sovereignty nor on its own deliver digital sovereignty.

Rather, a sovereign cloud allows an organization to ensure it can offer data sovereignty on the platform without sacrificing any of the commercial benefits of cloud-at-scale, such as the flexibility, agility and visibility organizations have come to expect from a modern cloud environment.

Complexity of the Digital and Data Sovereignty Landscape

The current global arena surrounding data privacy — and broader digital and data sovereignty considerations — is developing rapidly, with much interpretation and evolution yet to occur. Globally, between nations and regions, as well as within countries and regions, there have been and continue to be significant data privacy developments. In particular, there has been recognition of the importance of increased sovereign safeguards when it comes to better protecting mission-critical and sensitive private and public organization data, as well as the data of the citizens and customers that those organizations hold.

Similarly, there is global recognition of significant challenges when it comes to the ongoing discussions and deliberations in this space, but there is also the realization of the success to be enjoyed in overcoming these challenges. This success will result not only in greater surety when it comes to individual, citizen, public and corporate data privacy, but also in significant social and economic benefits. These benefits will flow from securing these critical sovereign data assets, as well as from ensuring that the core data is accessible to sovereign research and analysis and the subsequent tremendous value of the evolving data sets.

At first glance, considerations of digital sovereignty appear to be a straightforward discussion. Hopefully, however, we have demonstrated that it is a topic with deep impact across a very broad ecosystem of highly interrelated and, at times, contentious and competing matters. It certainly is a topic worthy of attention and discourse.

Taking Control of Your Digital Destiny with a Sovereign Cloud

The idea of a sovereign cloud is not a new concept, and, hopefully, there isn’t much confusion surrounding its vital role in an organization’s journey to achieve digital sovereignty. Even with countless ambiguities present in legal and compliance arenas — and ongoing uncertainty in the global, national and regional data privacy landscape — the relevance of a sovereign cloud as part of the journey toward digital sovereignty is more significant now than ever before.

A sovereign cloud should focus on one key element: to provide better infrastructure control so both public and private organizations can ensure they are following and applying the necessary data privacy, security, and compliance measures to protect sensitive and regulated data and application workloads. As noted earlier, this infrastructure control extends beyond the data, applications and systems; it also covers controls for data in transit, data workflows, data processing capabilities — such as artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms — and access to the data.

For more details on how to take control of your digital destiny, please read the latest Sovereign Cloud Market Leadership whitepaper.

Gary Marshall is VMware Multi-Cloud Strategist.

This guest blog is part of a Channel Futures sponsorship.

Orbus Software this week debuted its brand-new channel program, backed by a fresh company ethos for partner-first sales.

Some Channel Futures readers may already know Orbus Software, as it’s been around since 2004. The company continually earns high marks from Gartner; it’s not a low-profile firm so much as one that has not – until now – placed much emphasis on the channel.

“Partners were hidden in the background at Orbus historically,”  Marjorie Martinez, global head of partnerships at Orbus Software, told Channel Futures.

That changed after Orbus Software sold to private equity firm SilverTree, and when it hired Martinez this past January to craft its channel program.

Orbus Software’s Marjorie Martinez

“SilverTree came on board and injected some focus,” Martinez said.

Much of that focus came in the form of getting executives and other stakeholders to understand that Orbus Software would not meet its revenue goals relying mostly on inside sales.

“We can’t do this alone,” Martinez said.

Importantly, she noted, “I’ve had complete sponsorship from the top down so it’s been really good. … Everybody has rallied around” the shift toward channel-led sales.

To that end, teaming more deliberately with consultants, managed service providers, system integrators and value-added resellers is proving crucial to Orbus Software’s ability to expand.

“We’re not a services company, we’re a software company first,” Martinez said.

Understanding What Orbus Software Does

The Orbus platform delivers unified visibility into an organization’s whole environment, showing data including applications, people and processes. It’s oriented around enterprise architecture modeling. Customers (or partners, as the case now may be) perform analytics work and take the resulting information to make decisions about digital transformation. That can look like anything from choosing which apps to move into the cloud or retire, or ensuring compliance with ever-changing regulations.

Notably, until about two years ago, Orbus Software’s iServer365 remained an on-premise solution — a less appealing approach for users accustomed to the cloud era. However, since about 2020, Orbus Software has focused on delivering iServer365 in a SaaS model.

That works well as Orbus Software customers pursue digital transformation. And Martinez said they’re doing so at a more rapid pace for myriad reasons: COVID-19 (and any other pandemics that may come), remote work, supply chain problems, war, natural disasters, ever-changing and stringent government regulations, and so on. Organizations (whether directly or through their channel partners) use Orbus Software to analyze their environments and make any requisite decisions for changes. Channel partners with a services element use the Orbus platform to deliver analysis and recommendations for digital transformation. From there, the customer may look to the partner to handle any resulting projects; thus, Orbus Software’s capabilities can serve as an “in” for partners.

Orbus Software is a Microsoft gold partner. It delivers its SaaS platform through Azure and works with Microsoft products including PowerBI.

How the Orbus Software Partner Program Is Structured

Martinez, who hails from companies including Signavio and Erwin, has built a straightforward channel program for Orbus Software.

“I’ve been in the channel business for over 25 years. So all I’ve done is take a lot of the best practices and what I’ve seen work and implemented that here,” she said. “We’re really making it easy.”

As such, partners join the bronze, silver or gold tier, either in a resale or referral capacity. Orbus Software provides new-deal registration, standard discounts, and training and certification. Commissions and margins range from 15-25% depending on resale vs. referral, as well as tier and annual recurring revenue goals. Sales requirements for bronze start at around $50,000. Silver kicks in around $150,000. Anything above that reaches gold. Right now, commissions are good for the first year’s annual recurring revenue.

“We will evaluate that as we continue to grow the program,” Martinez said.

For example, because Orbus Software aims to grow 20% year-over-year, the company might move to a total contract value model.

“We’re agile enough” to shift as needed, Martinez said.

Partners can take advantage of free training through the online module. In-person, instructor-led training incurs a fee. Certification takes two-and-a-half hours and proves to end users that partners have the requisite knowledge to work with an organization. Expect a more comprehensive technical certification in about six months.

Co-Selling with Partners

In addition, Orbus Software will co-sell with partners.

“We don’t compete against partners — and we shouldn’t,” Martinez said. “We need to work with them.”

The company’s leaders and salespeople are understanding the value in that.

“We’re tracking partner-sourced revenue and the pipelines are starting to build,” Martinez said. “We’re seeing opportunities that wouldn’t have happened or been successful without the partner.”

That’s the kind of reassurance partners want to hear. And Martinez is coming through as the channel champion at Orbus Software.

“I’m really driving a partner-first culture here at Orbus because we cannot deliver everything by ourselves,” Martinez said. And, she added, “now we have something to help our partners to scale.”

A federal court has convicted a former CIA engineer on all counts for leaking classified hacking tools and exploits dubbed “Vault 7” to WikiLeaks.

Joshua Schulte was accused of handing over reams of classified data to WikiLeaks in 2016. The court convicted him of illegally gathering and transmitting national defense information. It also found him guilty of obstructing a criminal investigation and grand jury proceeding, among other charges.

The Vault 7 leak revealed how the CIA hacked Apple and Android smartphones in overseas spying operations, and efforts to turn internet-connected televisions into listening devices.

Valuable Intelligence-Gathering Cyber Tools

U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said Schulte was a CIA programmer. He had access to some of the country’s most valuable intelligence-gathering cyber tools. The CIA used the tools to battle terrorist organizations and other malign influences around the globe.

“When Schulte began to harbor resentment toward the CIA, he covertly collected those tools and provided them to WikiLeaks, making some of our most critical intelligence tools known to the public — and therefore, our adversaries,” he said.

Schulte knew his actions could pose an extraordinary threat to this nation if made public, Williams said. That rendered the tools “essentially useless.” It also provided “critical intelligence to those who wish to do us harm.”

The federal court convicted Schulte for “one of the most brazen and damaging acts of espionage in American history,” he said.

Keeper Security’s Darren Guccione

Darren Guccione is CEO and co-founder of Keeper Security.

“The recent conviction of a former CIA software engineer points to the government’s need to protect against both insider and external threats,” he said. “Comprehensive visibility, security and control over the entire organization’s infrastructure is essential. A unified cybersecurity platform is imperative, especially in mission-critical operations that preserve national security.”

There were many mergers and acquisitions in May and June, but which of the latest M&A news stood out? We’ve answered that question with a dozen deals that made their mark. See the slideshow above.

Despite economic concerns, there were two multibillion-dollar acquisitions in the channel during this period. Once the dust settled on those deals, the critiques came out of their hiding spots. For one of the acquisitions, analysts worry that there may be significant layoffs as a result. This assessment was made based on the acquiring company’s prior deal in which more than 1,000 workers were let go. For the other multibillion-dollar acquisition, one with a smaller price tag, the concern surrounds whether the purchase is a cultural fit in the MSP space.

Speaking of MSPs, we feature one company that has acquired four MSPs in the first half of this year alone. The shopping spree has lead to the company’s geographic expansion in South Florida, among other locales.

Lastly, we report on a deal that creates the largest technology solutions brokerage in the world. Some are alluding it’s a marriage made in heaven.

Also, if you didn’t catch our previous M&A gallery, you can find it here.

There were many mergers and acquisitions in May and June, but which of the latest M&A news stood out? We’ve answered that question with a dozen deals that made their mark. See the slideshow above.

Despite economic concerns, there were two multibillion-dollar acquisitions in the channel during this period. Once the dust settled on those deals, the critiques came out of their hiding spots. For one of the acquisitions, analysts worry that there may be significant layoffs as a result. This assessment was made based on the acquiring company’s prior deal in which more than 1,000 workers were let go. For the other multibillion-dollar acquisition, one with a smaller price tag, the concern surrounds whether the purchase is a cultural fit in the MSP space.

Speaking of MSPs, we feature one company that has acquired four MSPs in the first half of this year alone. The shopping spree has lead to the company’s geographic expansion in South Florida, among other locales.

Lastly, we report on a deal that creates the largest technology solutions brokerage in the world. Some are alluding it’s a marriage made in heaven.

Also, if you didn’t catch our previous M&A gallery, you can find it here.

There were many mergers and acquisitions in May and June, but which of the latest M&A news stood out? We’ve answered that question with a dozen deals that made their mark. See the slideshow above.

Despite economic concerns, there were two multibillion-dollar acquisitions in the channel during this period. Once the dust settled on those deals, the critiques came out of their hiding spots. For one of the acquisitions, analysts worry that there may be significant layoffs as a result. This assessment was made based on the acquiring company’s prior deal in which more than 1,000 workers were let go. For the other multibillion-dollar acquisition, one with a smaller price tag, the concern surrounds whether the purchase is a cultural fit in the MSP space.

Speaking of MSPs, we feature one company that has acquired four MSPs in the first half of this year alone. The shopping spree has lead to the company’s geographic expansion in South Florida, among other locales.

Lastly, we report on a deal that creates the largest technology solutions brokerage in the world. Some are alluding it’s a marriage made in heaven.

Also, if you didn’t catch our previous M&A gallery, you can find it here.

There were many mergers and acquisitions in May and June, but which of the latest M&A news stood out? We’ve answered that question with a dozen deals that made their mark. See the slideshow above.

Despite economic concerns, there were two multibillion-dollar acquisitions in the channel during this period. Once the dust settled on those deals, the critiques came out of their hiding spots. For one of the acquisitions, analysts worry that there may be significant layoffs as a result. This assessment was made based on the acquiring company’s prior deal in which more than 1,000 workers were let go. For the other multibillion-dollar acquisition, one with a smaller price tag, the concern surrounds whether the purchase is a cultural fit in the MSP space.

Speaking of MSPs, we feature one company that has acquired four MSPs in the first half of this year alone. The shopping spree has lead to the company’s geographic expansion in South Florida, among other locales.

Lastly, we report on a deal that creates the largest technology solutions brokerage in the world. Some are alluding it’s a marriage made in heaven.

Also, if you didn’t catch our previous M&A gallery, you can find it here.

There were many mergers and acquisitions in May and June, but which of the latest M&A news stood out? We’ve answered that question with a dozen deals that made their mark. See the slideshow above.

Despite economic concerns, there were two multibillion-dollar acquisitions in the channel during this period. Once the dust settled on those deals, the critiques came out of their hiding spots. For one of the acquisitions, analysts worry that there may be significant layoffs as a result. This assessment was made based on the acquiring company’s prior deal in which more than 1,000 workers were let go. For the other multibillion-dollar acquisition, one with a smaller price tag, the concern surrounds whether the purchase is a cultural fit in the MSP space.

Speaking of MSPs, we feature one company that has acquired four MSPs in the first half of this year alone. The shopping spree has lead to the company’s geographic expansion in South Florida, among other locales.

Lastly, we report on a deal that creates the largest technology solutions brokerage in the world. Some are alluding it’s a marriage made in heaven.

Also, if you didn’t catch our previous M&A gallery, you can find it here.

There were many mergers and acquisitions in May and June, but which of the latest M&A news stood out? We’ve answered that question with a dozen deals that made their mark. See the slideshow above.

Despite economic concerns, there were two multibillion-dollar acquisitions in the channel during this period. Once the dust settled on those deals, the critiques came out of their hiding spots. For one of the acquisitions, analysts worry that there may be significant layoffs as a result. This assessment was made based on the acquiring company’s prior deal in which more than 1,000 workers were let go. For the other multibillion-dollar acquisition, one with a smaller price tag, the concern surrounds whether the purchase is a cultural fit in the MSP space.

Speaking of MSPs, we feature one company that has acquired four MSPs in the first half of this year alone. The shopping spree has lead to the company’s geographic expansion in South Florida, among other locales.

Lastly, we report on a deal that creates the largest technology solutions brokerage in the world. Some are alluding it’s a marriage made in heaven.

Also, if you didn’t catch our previous M&A gallery, you can find it here.

There were many mergers and acquisitions in May and June, but which of the latest M&A news stood out? We’ve answered that question with a dozen deals that made their mark. See the slideshow above.

Despite economic concerns, there were two multibillion-dollar acquisitions in the channel during this period. Once the dust settled on those deals, the critiques came out of their hiding spots. For one of the acquisitions, analysts worry that there may be significant layoffs as a result. This assessment was made based on the acquiring company’s prior deal in which more than 1,000 workers were let go. For the other multibillion-dollar acquisition, one with a smaller price tag, the concern surrounds whether the purchase is a cultural fit in the MSP space.

Speaking of MSPs, we feature one company that has acquired four MSPs in the first half of this year alone. The shopping spree has lead to the company’s geographic expansion in South Florida, among other locales.

Lastly, we report on a deal that creates the largest technology solutions brokerage in the world. Some are alluding it’s a marriage made in heaven.

Also, if you didn’t catch our previous M&A gallery, you can find it here.