Mohammed Adnane Retmi, Vice President Sovereign Public Cloud at Core42, discusses the profound impact of sovereign public cloud solutions on digital transformation strategies across the UAE. Retmi explains how these solutions combine hyperscale capabilities with national regulatory alignment, addressing critical concerns around data residency, privacy, and jurisdictional control.
Given the increasing focus on data sovereignty, how do you see sovereign public cloud solutions fundamentally reshaping the digital transformation strategies of enterprises in the UAE over the next five years?
Sovereign public cloud solutions are becoming the cornerstone of digital transformation in the UAE. By combining hyperscale capabilities with national regulatory alignment, they eliminate the long-standing tradeoff between innovation and compliance.
Over the next five years, enterprises across regulated industries like healthcare, finance, and public sectors will increasingly migrate critical applications, AI models, and citizen-facing platforms to sovereign-enabled infrastructure. This shift empowers organizations to harness advanced analytics, real-time decision-making, and scalable AI solutions all while ensuring strict data residency, privacy, and jurisdictional control.
Core42’s Sovereign Public Cloud, powered by Microsoft Azure, leveraging our sovereign control platform – Insight, is engineered to meet this exact need: enabling transformative innovation within a trusted, compliant, and future-ready digital environment. Thus, it’s about shaping a resilient national digital ecosystem that enables organizations to lead with confidence, agility, and sovereignty.
Enhanced security and privacy are key benefits of sovereign clouds. From your perspective, what are the most critical security and privacy challenges an organisation faces, and how specifically do sovereign cloud solutions address these in a way that traditional public clouds might not?
Security and privacy concerns today extend well beyond technical threats, encompassing jurisdictional control, legal compliance, and data visibility. Traditional public clouds, while feature-rich, often fall short in addressing the unique needs of regulated sectors where compliance with national laws and full data sovereignty are non-negotiable. Organizations face risks such as limited control over data residency, reliance on shared responsibility models, and the legal exposure introduced by foreign jurisdictions.
Sovereign cloud solutions have emerged as a compelling response to these challenges. In the UAE, for example, the model is evolving to combine sovereign public cloud infrastructure with local regulatory oversight. Core42’s approach exemplifies this shift. Core42’s Sovereign Public Cloud powered by Microsoft Azure’s hyperscale cloud capabilities leveraging our sovereign control platform – Insight allows government and regulated entities to retain full ownership of encryption keys, enforce role-based access, and deploy confidential computing for enhanced data protection at rest, in transit and during processing.
Further, integration with National Security Operations Centers (NSOC) and electronic Governance, Risk, and Compliance (E-GRC) systems, will support in the future real-time compliance monitoring and response, while predefined guardrails and policy templates reduce the operational burden of regulatory adherence. Most critically, all data remains within UAE borders, ensuring alignment with national mandates and insulating government and regulated entities from foreign legal exposure. It’s this fusion of control, compliance, and capability that enables sovereign clouds to deliver both trust and transformation, providing a viable pathway for innovation without compromising security.
Beyond compliance, how do you envision sovereign public clouds contributing to broader national interests, such as fostering local innovation and reducing reliance on foreign technology providers, and what role does your company play in this ecosystem?
Sovereign public clouds are the foundation for national resilience, economic diversification, and global digital relevance. In the UAE, sovereign cloud infrastructure has become instrumental in driving innovation across sectors, empowering government and regulated entities to build, deploy, and scale AI-native applications within a trusted regulatory framework. This model reduces dependency on foreign technology providers, fosters homegrown innovation, and ensures that critical national data stays within the country’s jurisdiction.
Core42’s journey reflects this ambition. As a homegrown company, we’ve evolved from being a sovereign cloud provider to a global technology partner, actively contributing to strategic national priorities. Our role in the recently announced Stargate UAE initiative, a landmark 1GW AI compute cluster developed with global leaders like OpenAI, Oracle, and NVIDIA emphasizes this transformation. More than just infrastructure, it represents a shift toward building a sovereign AI ecosystem that positions the UAE as a global hub for advanced compute, talent development, and responsible AI innovation.
Through our Sovereign Public Cloud offering, we’re creating pathways for regulated entities to embrace hyperscale capabilities while maintaining control over sensitive data. By working closely with the UAE government and aligning with national frameworks, we’re enabling a new model – where local innovation can scale globally, data remains protected, and the benefits of digital transformation are shared across society. This is how sovereign public cloud contribute to compliance and long-term national value creation.
Scalability and cost efficiency are inherent public cloud benefits. How do you balance these advantages with the specific requirements of data sovereignty, and what strategic considerations are paramount when deploying workloads to a sovereign public cloud environment?
Balancing scalability with sovereignty begins with designing infrastructure that is both elastic and compliant. With Core42’s Sovereign Public Cloud, we’ve engineered a model with Microsoft that offers elasticity without sacrificing control. The shared-resource model and OPEX-based pricing keep costs predictable, while sovereign controls ensure compliance with residency and access mandates. Strategically, organizations must start by classifying data based on sensitivity and aligning each workload to the appropriate sovereignty level – open, confidential, sensitive, or secret. A phased migration approach beginning with non-critical workloads allows organizations to evaluate performance and compliance in real time, before expanding to AI, analytics, and mission-critical operations.
For technology leaders looking to effectively adopt and deploy sovereign public cloud solutions, what strategic insights and practical advice would you offer based on your experience and the evolving landscape in the UAE?
The journey begins with a mindset shift. Treat sovereignty as a strategic enabler, not just a compliance obligation. Start with understanding what kind of cloud your organization truly needs, followed by a full workload assessment based on the UAE’s data classification guidelines. Leaders should start by mapping regulatory obligations to business objectives and identifying workloads that can benefit most from sovereignty, such as AI/ML, healthcare, or public sector applications.
It’s also critical to build partnerships early by choosing a partner with proven regulatory and operational expertise, like Core42, ensuring integration with national security frameworks. Success requires agility. Plan for automation, real-time monitoring, and future scalability. And finally, measure not only security and compliance, but also business agility, cost optimization, and sustainability as key KPIs of your sovereign cloud environment.
As the UAE continues its journey towards a robust digital future, what role do you believe collaboration between government entities, sovereign cloud providers, and private sector organizations will play in accelerating the widespread and effective adoption of these solutions?
Collaboration is the cornerstone of sovereign cloud success. The UAE has created a unique ecosystem where public-private collaboration is not only encouraged but institutionalized. Government entities define the strategic vision and regulatory priorities, while sovereign cloud providers contribute the infrastructure, security, and compliance capabilities needed to bring that vision to life.
A powerful example of this is the recent partnership between the Department of Government Enablement – Abu Dhabi, Microsoft, and Core42 which acts as a blueprint of this approach, combining global technology with local sovereignty. The platform underpins Abu Dhabi’s ambition to become the world’s first AI-native government by 2027, enabling the deployment of over 200 AI-driven solutions to enhance service delivery, transparency, and operational efficiency.
This kind of collaboration demonstrates how aligned efforts, combining global technology expertise with local sovereignty and policy frameworks can accelerate AI adoption while preserving data integrity and public trust. It sets a blueprint not just for the UAE, but for how forward-looking governments globally can modernize with speed, security, and purpose.
