AI drives move to hybrid cloud amid sovereignty fears

Enterprises are shifting more AI-related workloads to hybrid and private cloud environments as digital sovereignty, governance and vendor dependence rise up the technology agenda, according to new research from SUSE.

SUSE's Cloud and AI Pulse Survey polled 596 enterprise technology leaders in the US, UK, Japan, India and Germany, examining how AI is affecting cloud strategy, budgets, governance and IT priorities.

The findings suggest businesses are moving away from default reliance on public cloud for some workloads, particularly where data control, compliance and operational resilience matter most. Across the countries surveyed, 59% of organisations said they plan to prioritise hybrid cloud deployments for workloads requiring digital sovereignty, while 16% said they would rely solely on private cloud.

That shift comes as companies grapple with the practical demands of deploying AI. Globally, 61% of respondents described AI implementation as a critical or major challenge, including 24% who called it critical and 37% who rated it major. At the same time, 82% ranked AI implementation as a top budget priority across the surveyed markets.

Cloud shift

The data points to a broader reassessment of infrastructure choices as organisations try to balance AI ambitions with tighter control over data, systems and suppliers. More than half of respondents, 51%, said they plan to increase spending on scaling across multiple cloud environments, while 46% are increasing investment in enterprise support for open source to help manage multi-cloud operations.

Digital sovereignty emerged as a particularly strong theme in AI model training. Globally, 42% of respondents said it was extremely important and 40% said it was very important. The results suggest that data location, the rules governing it and the ability to avoid excessive dependence on one provider are becoming more important as businesses expand AI projects.

Skills shortages, security and AI implementation ranked among respondents' main priorities overall, showing that many organisations see the issue as extending beyond infrastructure alone.

Margaret Dawson, chief marketing officer at SUSE, said the survey reflected a marked change in enterprise thinking as AI adds technical and governance pressures.

"While it was no surprise that more than half of survey respondents say implementing AI is a major challenge, we were encouraged by the impact AI is having on hybrid and private cloud adoption and digital sovereignty as it relates to AI model training data," Dawson said.

US concerns

The US results stand out for the prominence of vendor lock-in and resilience concerns. Some 31% of US respondents said digital sovereignty is a top technology priority. The survey also found that 39% of US enterprises were concerned about reducing vendor lock-in, above the global average of 25% and higher than in any other country surveyed.

When asked about challenges, 50% of US respondents described vendor lock-in as a critical or major issue. IT resilience was named the most important technology priority by 64% of US respondents, compared with a global average of 55%. Enhanced security was cited as a top IT priority by 53% of US participants.

These findings suggest that, for many US organisations, infrastructure strategy is being shaped not only by AI adoption but also by a desire for greater operational independence and stronger continuity planning. In that market, AI implementation ranked as the top budget priority and the second-largest critical challenge.

Regional patterns

The research also highlighted variation between countries in how AI is viewed. In Germany, for example, AI implementation ranked only 12th as a critical challenge but second as a budget priority, suggesting a gap between how urgently respondents perceive the issue and how much they are prepared to spend on it.

Across the wider sample, businesses appear to be redesigning infrastructure around a mix of compliance, control and flexibility. Hybrid and multi-cloud setups are gaining ground because they allow organisations to place sensitive or regulated workloads in environments they govern more directly, while still using cloud services where needed.

Open source support is also becoming more central to that approach. Nearly half of respondents said they were increasing investment in this area, indicating that enterprises want more flexibility in managing complex estates spanning on-premises systems, private cloud and public cloud platforms.

The survey was conducted among director-level and senior decision-makers responsible for software tools and IT infrastructure strategy. The results point to continued changes in cloud deployment models as AI projects move from experimentation to broader operational use.

"This new data confirms what we are seeing from customers: priorities are shifting toward more flexible, scalable and governed deployments," Dawson said.