By bringing together representatives from the European Commission, Spain’s Ministry for Digital Transformation and the Civil Service, and global technology companies like NetApp, SUSE, and Fujitsu, our recent event in Madrid convened key voices from across Europe’s cloud and AI ecosystem to discuss what it takes to build open, interoperable, and sovereign digital infrastructure.

Contributions from technology providers, public administrations, and research organizations highlighted a shared challenge: how can Europe strengthen control over its digital infrastructure while remaining open to innovation and collaboration? Three key takeaways emerged from the discussions.

European Digital Sovereignty Starts with Technology Choice

The European Commission’s contribution brought the European policy perspective to the forefront, including the evolving framework for cloud and AI and the proposed Cloud and AI Development Act (CADA).

For organizations, the challenge is translating these ambitions into infrastructure that offers greater control over technology choices, operations, and future development. Open, interoperable platforms can help reduce vendor lock-in and give organizations the flexibility to combine technologies according to their needs.

Sovereignty is not about closing off the ecosystem. It is about having the freedom to choose and control the technologies on which critical digital services depend.

Sovereign AI Requires Collaboration Across the Technology Stack

Building competitive AI infrastructure requires more than GPUs or AI models alone. It depends on how computing resources, infrastructure management, storage, software, and AI technologies work together.

Contributions from Energy Aware Runtime (EAR), Multiverse Computing, and Semidynamics highlighted complementary areas of European innovation, from energy-aware computing and AI models to processor technology. OpenNebula Systems’ role is to provide the cloud infrastructure layer through which organizations can deploy and manage all these capabilities.

Europe’s sovereign AI ambitions depend on making complementary technologies work together through open, interoperable infrastructure.

An Open Ecosystem Is Essential to Enterprise Cloud and AI

Perspectives from NetApp, SUSE, and Fsas Technologies (a Fujitsu company) reinforced the importance of collaboration between infrastructure, storage, and software providers. Combining these capabilities enables organizations to build cloud and AI environments that can evolve without being tied to a single technology stack.

Contributions from Spain’s public administration and research ecosystem—including Red.es, the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), and IKERLAN (Mondragon Corporation)—also brought attention to the practical considerations involved in advancing sovereign digital infrastructure.

These perspectives underline a broader point: sovereignty requires both capable technologies and an ecosystem of providers that can integrate them into solutions for real-world needs. The discussions reinforced the importance of open technologies and strong partnerships in building a more interoperable, competitive European cloud and AI ecosystem. 

Join us these days at NVIDIA GTC Berlin 2026 to see OpenNebula Systems’ cloud and AI capabilities in action, including a joint live demo with NetApp.