In growing geopolitical uncertainty, the mantra of unconditionally moving resources to the global cloud is losing relevance, giving way to the urgent need to build digital independence. Infrastructure leaders (I&O) need to prepare for a year in which physical data localisation and supplier diversification will become not so much a technological option as a key component of business survival strategies.
For the past decade, the IT strategy of many businesses has been based on a simple premise: a global hyperscaler will do it better, cheaper and more securely. Local data centres were treated as a relic of the past and the notion of digital sovereignty was reduced to the need to meet RODO requirements. Today, this paradigm is being rapidly eroded. The tough question is increasingly being asked in CIOs’ offices: what happens if global digital supply chains are disrupted?
Geopatria: A strategy for the times of “Decoupling”
The notion of geopatriarchy, which is beginning to dominate trend analyses for the coming quarters, is sometimes mistakenly equated in the IT community with simple local economic patriotism. This is a cognitive error that can cost companies stability. In reality, geopatriotry is a reaction to the global trend of ‘decoupling’, or the separation of economic and technological blocks.
Modern I&O cannot ignore the fact that the public cloud is not an ethereal entity, but a physical infrastructure under the jurisdiction of specific powers. Relocating workloads (workloads) from global platforms to regional or national solutions ceases to be a matter of ideology and becomes part of systemic risk management.
The key shift is from data sovereignty (where the files lie) to operational sovereignty. IT leaders need to ask themselves: in the event of sanctions, regulatory changes in the US or Asia, or physical disruption of cross-border links, will my business retain operational capability? Geopatria is essentially building a technical insurance policy. It reduces geopolitical risk and makes critical business processes independent of decisions made on other continents.
Composability: How to escape the “Vendor Lock-in” trap
Critics of the local approach rightly point out that abandoning the global cloud could mean being cut off from innovation. Regional providers rarely have the R&D budgets of the Silicon Valley giants. The solution to this dilemma is a new approach to hybrid computing.
Hybridisation in 2025 is not about bundling an old server room with a cloud VPN. It is a philosophy of composable and extensible architecture. I&O managers must build systems from interchangeable building blocks. It’s about coordinating compute, storage and networking mechanisms in such a way that resources can be freely interchanged between providers.
If a global provider becomes risky (politically or cost-wise), the company should be technically able to move processes to local infrastructure without rewriting applications. This approach forces I&O leaders to change their thinking about architecture – from monolithic deployments to flexible, containerised architectures that ‘float’ between different environments. This is where the real business value is born: in the ability to adapt quickly, rather than in simply owning the servers.
Crisis of confidence and defence of identity
The proliferation of infrastructure (Edge, local cloud, global cloud) brings with it a new threat: the erosion of trust. In an environment where data travels across multiple jurisdictions and systems, verifying what is true becomes an engineering challenge.
Therefore, security against disinformation is becoming an integral part of the new I&O strategy. We are not talking about PR image protection, but hard technologies for digital identity verification. In the era of Deepfakes and software supply chain attacks, companies need to implement mechanisms that guarantee that the code, command or user is who they say they are.
For operations departments, this means implementing systems that validate the authenticity of communications at every stage. Protecting brand reputation starts deep at the infrastructure layer – from securing the identity of administrators to cryptographically signing application containers.
The economics of independence: Energy efficiency as a necessity
Building a sovereign, hybrid infrastructure is more expensive than renting computing power on a pay-as-you-go model from a giant. This is a fact that CFOs often do not want to discuss. However, I&O managers have a new argument in hand: energy-efficient computing.
New technologies and practices to reduce the carbon footprint are not just a nod to ESG. It is a way to fund independence. The use of neuromorphic systems, optical computing or simply radical energy optimisation of data centres, reduces the operating costs of in-house and co-located infrastructure.
In this way, ‘Green IT’ ceases to be a marketing add-on and becomes the foundation of the hybrid model’s profitability. I&O leaders who combine the geopatriation trend with an aggressive energy efficiency strategy will be able to prove to management what is most important: operational security while maintaining budgetary discipline.
From administrator to strategist
The infrastructure and operations areas are entering a phase of strategic maturity. The role of the head of I&O is evolving from a provider of resources (‘give me a server’) to an architect of state and business continuity.
Understanding the impact of geopatriation and implementing a model where a company is not held hostage to one provider or one jurisdiction is the most pressing task for the coming months. Those who treat this trend as a trivial throwback to the past may wake up to the reality that they have no control over their own digital destiny.
