Stuttgart: Empalis announces its partnership with AWS European Sovereign Cloud (ESC). Thanks to its European independent management and governance structure, as well as its own Security Operations Center (SOC), the AWS European Sovereign Cloud is considered to be digitally sovereign. According to the Roadmap Update of 25 November 2025, Amazon CloudFront will be available from the end of the year. Empalis offers services and licenses for this in the German-speaking region (D-A-CH).
Data protection at European level – at innovative technological hyperscaler level
At EU and German level, politics and business are currently discussing the development of a cloud infrastructure that is independent of Europe. Although solutions on the market, such as StackIT from the Schwarz Group, are seen as an alternative to the well-known hyperscalers, they are not yet widely used, as the advantage of high data protection and security requirements “à la européenne” has so far been limited by the disadvantage of a lack of global reach.
This is the primary reason why a European, completely separate AWS cloud has been created, which will be available on the European market from the end of 2025. Not only for the first time on the basis of an independent, completely separate European parent company from the US AWS cloud. The AWS European Sovereign Cloud (ESC) has all the innovative power and technological flexibility and scalability thanks to its high technological compatibility with the entire AWS cloud portfolio – and even far beyond that.
AWS European Sovereign Cloud: No “one-size-fits-all solution”
The new location of the AWS ESC, with a German member on the board, the headquarters of the first AWS ESC region in Brandenburg, and exclusively European employees, has already prompted well-known services – including global players – to announce their partnership: AWS customers in Europe will be able to access “a wide range of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Independent Software Vendor (ISV) offerings in the AWS European Sovereign Cloud,” as AWS Germany announced on 19.02.2025. These include the Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) with applications particularly for the public sector and heavily regulated industries, the Dedalus Group with specific applications in healthcare and diagnostics, as well as innovative and security- or governance-focused services from Genesis, Esri, Mendix, Pega, Trend Micro, Wiz and GitLab, to name a few. The detailed announcement of all partnerships can be found here.
The AWS European Sovereign Cloud also features central features such as the AWS Resilience Hub, the AWS Fault Injection Service and AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery. This is where the idea of the AWS European Sovereign Cloud comes into play: AWS has already demonstrated its strength in its security services as well as in resilience and recovery. As a leader in the Gartner Quadrant and also technologically leading in areas such as security automation, logging, encryption and API access control, AWS’s security services are cloud-native and auditable (including services such as GuardDuty, Security Hub, Macie and KMS). The AWS European Sovereign Cloud can be integrated with other software partners that have been awarded by Gartner, such as Veeam, Commvault, Rubrik and IBM, without any problems.
Why data sovereignty, cyber resilience and compliance must now be considered together
Increasing regulation across the EU, such as NIS2, DORA, the Cyber Resilience Act and, last but not least, the GDPR, the growing threat situation from cyber attacks, and more recently AI-based exploits and geopolitical risks are changing the world of IT security. There are currently reports of companies and even authorities suffering bitter losses by opening up their data sovereignty to non-European services, only to have them suddenly shut down under the pretext of reasons.
Today, the question is no longer “How secure are our systems?” but “Who has control over our data – and how quickly can we restore it under our control?”
This question, which is certainly explosive, vividly illustrates the interface between data sovereignty, cyber resilience, recovery capability and compliance according to the NIST Framework.
At Empalis, we see our contribution in the following 3 principles
- Data sovereignty is a core prerequisite for cyber resilience
- Resilience – and thus also recovery – are mandatory, not optional, components of modern compliance
- The cloud can increase resilience – but only if implemented correctly.
Why a cyber resilience and backup specialist is the right partner
This is where Empalis comes in as your Data Protection and Cyber Resilience partner:
- Comprehensive consulting expertise for your infrastructure, IT architecture and virtualization and migration topics
- Optimization and monitoring with state-of-the-art cleanroom technologies
- Managed service in combination with technologies and state-of-the-art cyber resilience approaches
- With the best Gartner technology partners and fantastic license benefits at your fingertips.
A specialized provider like Empalis, with proven backup, recovery and cyber resilience expertise, brings exactly the competencies that are essential today to operate the cloud securely and compliantly.
Because a clever data protection architecture is the starting point for digital sovereignty and resilience, Empalis has chosen to partner with AWS European Sovereign Cloud.
Do you have questions about data sovereignty or the AWS European Sovereign Cloud? Please feel free to contact me directly.
Philip Röder, Head of Business Development & Consulting
Phone +49 162 4196789
