Cisco Live: Sovereignty moves into the boardroom

In Amsterdam last week, 21,000 people gathered for Cisco Live Europe, the company’s biggest regional event yet. The scale reflected mounting pressure on infrastructure as AI accelerates and geopolitical risk reshapes corporate planning. And a word that was previously a tick box on a compliance page came to the fore as a boardroom concern: sovereignty. In effect, keeping a country’s data securely inside that country.

“AI is here, and it’s moving at breakneck speed, where the decisions you’re making today will define your competitive advantage for years to come,” warned Gordon Thomson, president of Cisco EMEA, in his opening keynote address. “(Sovereignty) is about finding the right balance between flexibility and control.”

Later, in an exclusive interview, he told Gadget that the issue was as relevant to South African businesses as those in the rest of the world.

“This is not a niche thing anymore,” he said. “It’s a boardroom event, and it’s everywhere. Customers are asking us for certainty. They want to know that the commitments we make to them will stand irrespective of what is happening geopolitically.

“It’s not just about where the data sits. It’s about whether your infrastructure continues to operate when things get difficult. Operational sovereignty is about continuity. It’s about durability.”

According to Thomson, sovereignty must be embedded in contract design and infrastructure architecture, which makes it both an IT issue and a C-Suite concern. And South Africa is part of that same global shift.

“I don’t think South Africa is different to anywhere else. Customers want clarity. They want transparency. Once they understand the exposure, they can make informed decisions.

“What we’re seeing now is much deeper engagement at executive level. They are asking what happens if jurisdictional rules change. They are asking what happens if access is restricted. They are asking what protections are built into the architecture.”

And, of course, AI intensifies those discussions.

“AI will only be successful if you can trust what AI is doing. When you are deploying AI agents that are making decisions across your infrastructure, that trust becomes fundamental.

“These systems are designed to act quickly. That’s the value. But with that speed comes responsibility. You need visibility into what they are doing.”

He rejected the idea that sovereignty and global integration were incompatible.

“You can design solutions that meet local regulatory requirements and still participate in global ecosystems. It doesn’t mean you disconnect.”

An aspect of sovereignty that is more likely to crop up across the African continent than elsewhere is the integration of language.

“Sovereignty is not only about control. It is also about relevance. The infrastructure has to serve the market it operates in.

“We can do everything pretty well in English, and we can provide phenomenal output in English, but can we do that in local language? In many markets, local language capability is part of digital sovereignty. If your systems cannot operate in the language of your customers, you create distance.”

Across multinational operations, that awareness must travel across jurisdictions. This was a key point made by Albi van Zyl, executive managing director of technology solutions at NTT Data, which began life as Dimension Data in South Africa.

“This conversation is definitely a global one for us,” she said during a media briefing on sovereign infrastructure at Cisco Live. “The priorities are different, but the complication for multinational clients is about executing consistently across multiple jurisdictions. We enable clients to develop that playbook, thinking about how to deliver in multiple jurisdictions in a consistent manner.”

Cost, as usual, remains a limiting factor.

Steven Dickens, chief analyst at HyperFRAME Research, told Gadget: “While I think you should be aware of where your data is and who has access to it and how it’s controlled, senior IT leaders should look at sovereignty, assess the risk and invest accordingly. And not get caught in the hype.”

Thomson did not disagree.

“There is a balance between what customers believe they need and what they are willing to pay for that need. You can build very high levels of isolation. You can build very high levels of control. But there is always a commercial consideration. Customers make decisions based on risk appetite and investment.”

“This is not about technology teams having a compliance checklist. This is about leadership understanding the exposure and making conscious choices.”

* Arthur Goldstuck is CEO of World Wide Worx, editor-in-chief of Gadget.co.za, and author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to AI – The African Edge.