F E A T U R E
THE CARROT AND THE STICK: HOW DATA SOVEREIGNTY INFLUENCES DATA CENTRE PURCHASING
Mike Hoy, CTO at Pulsant, discusses the highs and lows of data sovereignty in the data centre industry and how UK governance can impact them.
ata sovereignty has
D rapidly become a critical consideration for organisations evaluating and selecting data centre solutions. At its core, data sovereignty is the principle that data is subject to the laws and governance structures of the country in which it is physically stored or collected.
This principle is embedded deeply into two foundational legislative instruments: the Data Protection Act 2018( DPA 2018) and the UK General Data Protection Regulation( UK GDPR).
Both the DPA 2018 and the UK GDPR establish mandatory standards for how personal data must be handled, but they go beyond that. These laws define the standard of sovereignty and shape the processes surrounding the collection, storage, access and processing of personal data.
Consequently, the selection of a data centre provider is no longer just a matter of performance metrics or operational efficiency. Instead, it’ s a decision heavily influenced by regulatory compliance and the ability of the provider to support the broader Digital Transformation goals of a business.
This consideration becomes especially important when organisations seek to harness the potential of emerging technologies, particularly AI and Machine Learning( ML). These technologies are data-intensive and require vast amounts of computing power. They demand a digital infrastructure that can handle complex processing workloads in real time. UKbased high-performance data centres are emerging as essential to this transformation.
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