IBM is bringing its Sovereign Core software to Europe. Cegeka is joining as a partner for the Benelux region.
IBM, like every major cloud party these days, is jumping on the sovereignty trend. With Sovereign Core, the company is launching a new software solution that helps organizations manage AI workloads within self-controlled, sovereign IT environments. The software is designed to meet stricter regulations regarding data management and digital autonomy.
IBM Sovereign Core is designed for companies, governments, and IT service providers that need operational control over sensitive data and AI models. The software makes it possible to build and manage cloud-native and AI applications under the full control of the organization itself, including location and access management.
Sovereign at the core
The software integrates functions such as a customer-controlled control panel, local identity and key management, continuous compliance monitoring, and the execution of AI inference on local infrastructure. IBM claims that Sovereign Core includes no empty promises.
In contrast to traditional solutions that may or may not rightly describe themselves as ‘sovereign,’ Sovereign Core does not add sovereignty layers to existing architectures, but makes sovereignty a basic feature of the software itself. The solution is built on open technology from Red Hat.
Cegeka is local partner
IBM is working with local IT service providers for the rollout. For the Benelux region, that is Cegeka; in Germany, Computacenter has been selected as a partner. These partners supply the software to customers within regional data centers, so that compliance and data locality remain guaranteed.
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By handing over the keys to local partners, IBM can also guarantee that customer data remains outside the legal reach of the American government. According to IBM, this approach makes it easier to start up AI applications in sectors where that was previously impossible due to legal restrictions.
IBM Sovereign Core will be available as a technical preview from February 2026. Broader availability will follow later this year.