Forrester Research is offering a reality check to policymakers and business leaders of Europe on digital independence against American technology behemoths. According to the most recent projections by analyst house Forrester Research, not one single company from Europe is expected to make its full-scale transition to move away from US hyperscalers by 2026 at all. This clearly shows how economic realities are trumping politics to adopt more pragmatic strategies for achieving independence than before.
Economic pragmatism trumps sovereignty ambitions across European markets
There is also increasing pressure on European companies to reduce their dependence on U.S.-supplied technology, but reality tends to take precedence over politics here, too. According to Dane Anderson, senior vice president of Forrester’s international research, “Current volatility and operational requirements tend to encourage a more pragmatic approach for European companies than pure technology independence. The simple truth is that total independence from leaders such as AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure is simply not feasible within the near to medium term.”
Although some sectors have started to move particular niche-related applications to European companies, Forrester regards the total overall impact on cloud markets in Europe to be slight. A full-scale transition from established cloud providers will entail major investments in infrastructure, extensive staff training programs, and changes to business processes that many enterprises may not afford to implement at this point. The economic advantages of established cloud environments continue to trump concerns for sovereignty for most enterprises.
Some of the key obstacles to attaining cloud sovereignty are:
- A huge investment is needed for infrastructure
- Lack of good options within Europe
- High cost of extensive retraining and migration
- Risk of operational disruption during transition
Microsoft maintains desktop dominance despite open-source alternatives
Analysts at Forrester do not believe that Linux-based desktop environments and open-source office applications, as implemented at Schleswig-Holstein or Lyon, for example, will become widespread among European enterprises by 2026. This is because of the absence of Mission Critical and fully supported products to compete with Microsoft applications’ full functionality and support offered to enterprises.
Despite growing demands for digital sovereignty by politicians, established Microsoft ecosystem solutions continue to have obvious advantages for now. This is especially because local firms require high-quality support, world-class integration capabilities, and reliability, where current open-source solutions clearly lack scalability for enterprises. While independence from American suppliers is regarded as crucial, current adversities associated with workstation conversions have higher cost and performance penalties than any benefit derived from such strategies at present.
Artificial intelligence adoption lags behind its US counterparts significantly
A lack of comprehensive technical support, integration capabilities, and overall business robustness offered by current open-source competitiveness, for the most part, makes European initiatives rather wide of the mark for actual business aspirations regarding digital sovereignty strategies currently being implemented at this point in time. Although expectations for doubling the use of generative AI among the general population exist for most countries in Europe, its use is expected to encounter tough challenges among enterprises.
When it comes to generative AI adoption at the company level, Forester predicts that European enterprises will lag behind their American peers by 10% by 2026. This is because several factors govern this lag, such as the late entry of products into markets in Europe, the unavailability of developed AI capabilities among enterprises in Europe, and tough regulatory environments for leveraging AI at enterprises for quick adoption.
It is apparent from Forrester’s analysis that Europe-based organizations need to speed up their AI strategies by focusing on investments needed for AI capabilities within their organizations to avoid delays owing to regulations rather than awaiting directions from governments. It also stresses reaching beyond proof of concepts to harness concrete advantages for themselves, while others remain lagging in the new business landscape because of AI advancements.
