Spot on: Digital sovereignty.

Professor Dr Martin Kaloudis and Steven Handgraetinger

Where does Bechtle stand on digital sovereignty?

Digital sovereignty refers to the ability to make decisions freely and independently, with full technological autonomy, and to maintain control over one’s own systems and data.

The following principles are essential:

Ensuring freedom of choice in terms of technologies and providers.
Building robust systems that can withstand disruptions and external influence.
Enhancing resilience through deliberate alternative strategies, minimised dependencies, and viable exit scenarios

Read the positioning statement

Our positioning statement on digital sovereignty is based on the work of the Bechtle Group’s Digital Sovereignty think tank. The authors are Prof. Dr Martin Kaloudis (left), Executive Vice President Cluster Central & West Germany, and Steven Handgrätinger, Executive Vice President Public Sector, both of Bechtle AG.

Stories and press releases.

Strategic benchmark for IT architectures: Bechtle develops index for digital sovereignty.

Europe’s path to digital sovereignty: Panel talk at Bitkom’s AIDAQ Summit.

Bechtle – Europe’s trusted IT partner for digital sovereignty.

Our goal is to systematically strengthen freedom of choice, reliability, and resilience for our customers—tailored to their specific business models, organisational purpose, and future development.

Our value proposition:

Extensive experience in integrating digital infrastructures—from workplace to data centre, from on-premise to multi-cloud, and from business applications to artificial intelligence.
Decades of operational expertise across diverse IT environments, delivered by highly qualified specialists and through managed services.
Access to established and specialised manufacturer and partner networks in Germany, across Europe, and worldwide.
A vendor-neutral approach combined with in-depth product knowledge.

What milestones has Bechtle already achieved as an implementation partner for digital sovereignty?

Since Bechtle began its multi-cloud service business in 2017, freedom of choice in sourcing cloud services has been a cornerstone of our comprehensive portfolio. It enables both private and public-sector customers to easily purchase and manage a wide range of cloud services—from public cloud offerings to enterprise-grade solutions—via a single platform.

In addition to all major hyperscalers, including providers of public cloud services for the German Federal Administration, we also work with key European cloud providers such as IONOS (since 2020), Plusserver and OVHcloud (both since 2021), and STACKIT (since 2023). These award-winning partnerships have demonstrated their value in numerous customer projects across Europe.

Our collaborations have been further strengthened through projects focused on digital sovereignty, such as the implementation of Dataport’s open-source-based administrative workplace, dPhoenix Suite (2020), and the GAIA-X flagship project POSSIBLE (2021), which aimed to demonstrate the technological and economic potential of a European cloud that meets the highest standards of data sovereignty, availability, and innovation.

Bechtle has been a partner of the European Open Clouds for Research Environments (OCRE) project since 2021, winning lots for the same project again in 2025. Since 2023, Bechtle has also partnered with Swiss-based VNC – Virtual Network Consult AG on open-source enterprise applications. And since 2024, Bechtle has offered a digitally sovereign collaboration solution based on Nextcloud, which can be hosted in a Bechtle-operated data centre in Germany, at the Federal Information Technology Centre (ITZBund), or with another cloud provider.