- IBM announced Sovereign Core, AI-ready software for building sovereign cloud environments
- Sovereign Core enables control of AI workloads within chosen jurisdictions using open source tech
- The software keeps all data, keys, and operations under customer control within local boundaries
IBM today announced Sovereign Core, an AI-ready software for enterprises, governments, and service providers to build sovereign environments. The software will help customers achieve sovereignty and full operational control.
Sovereign Core is purpose-built software to build, deploy, and manage cloud-native and AI workloads under an organisation's own authority, within chosen jurisdictions, built on Red Hat's open source foundation. According to IBM, unlike approaches that layer sovereignty controls onto existing architectures, Sovereign Core makes sovereignty an inherent property of the software itself.
IBM's offering comes at a time when organisations are facing a growing imperative to exercise control over their technology infrastructure. Driven by evolving regulatory requirements, and the need for auditable governance, enterprises and governments are seeking self-managed environments where they maintain complete operational authority, particularly as they deploy AI workloads that amplify sovereignty concerns.
“As AI adoption accelerates in India, businesses will need to innovate while meeting tightening regulatory requirements and controlling sensitive data and AI workloads,” said Sandip Patel, Managing Director, IBM India & South Asia. “IBM Sovereign Core offers an AI-ready sovereign stack, providing organisations with control, ensuring compliance and operational autonomy.”
Using Sovereign Core, organisations can maintain direct operational authority over software operations, deployment decisions, and system configurations without intermediation from a vendor not in region, IBM said.
All authentication, authorisation, encryption keys, and access management remain within jurisdiction boundaries under customer control. Operational data, system telemetry, and audit trails are generated, stored, and managed within the sovereign boundary. Additionally, AI model deployment and hosting, local GPU clusters, local inference execution and agent operations occur under local governance, without exporting data to external providers.
As per IBM, organisations can deploy IBM Sovereign Core in various environments — on-premises data centres, supported in-region cloud infrastructure, or through IT service providers. IBM is collaborating with IT service providers globally, starting with an initial rollout in Europe with Cegeka in Belgium and the Netherlands and Computacenter in Germany.
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