Offer hosting with a European cloud provider as the default for our European clients#
What this is, concretely#
This commitment consists of making hosting with a European cloud provider the default option offered to your European clients. The notion of “default” is central: the aim is not to forbid other options but to invert the burden of decision. Today, many SaaS publishers offer by default hosting with a US hyperscaler (AWS, Azure, GCP) and present the European option as a variant available on request. The commitment consists of inverting that: by default, a European cloud provider (OVHcloud, Scaleway, Outscale, Infomaniak, Hetzner, IONOS, Aruba, or a SecNumCloud provider such as Cloud Temple or Worldline for the strictest requirements), and a US hyperscaler as an option if the client explicitly requests it with documented justification.
The commitment applies to your standard offer for the European market. It does not prevent a deployment on AWS if a client has a structural reason for asking for it (integration with a client IT system already on AWS, a specific contractual requirement, managed features unavailable elsewhere). It only asks that this not be the default.
Why this commitment matters#
Thesis 7 of the manifesto targets precisely this dynamic: “distributing free software through registries and networks under foreign jurisdiction is to grant that jurisdiction a right of inspection and interruption over what we believe we own.” The same logic applies to hosting. A European publisher hosting its solution on AWS grants the US jurisdiction a right of inspection via the CLOUD Act, regardless of the location of AWS’s European data centres. Thesis 12 of the manifesto then turns to the particular role of European providers: their default position either feeds or starves sovereign alternatives.
For your clients, default inversion has concrete operational value. Many clients who would have preferred European hosting do not request it out of unfamiliarity, inertia, or because the option was not presented to them with sufficient visibility. When European hosting is the default, the client wanting a derogation must justify it — which filters out choices made by habit.
The commitment resonates particularly with the French “Cloud au centre” regulatory context, which asks public administrations to prefer SecNumCloud offers for sensitive data. A publisher offering European hosting by default — including a SecNumCloud option — eases the compliance of its public-sector clients.
A concrete example#
A French SaaS publisher of sales-performance analytics, around 55 employees, whose offer was historically deployed on AWS since 2020, takes this commitment in April 2026 with a 12-month horizon. The transformation is substantial: deployment on a European cloud provider must be tested, performance validated, deployment pipelines adjusted, and pricing terms negotiated.
The publisher selects OVHcloud as the default European cloud provider on the basis of a functional and pricing comparison. The deployment on OVHcloud Public Cloud is operational by the seventh month, with a reference production environment. The commercial catalogue is revised: the default mention of hosting becomes “OVHcloud hosting (France), with an Outscale option (SecNumCloud 3.2 qualification) for clients with stricter requirements and an AWS Europe option on request, with documented justification”. Of the new signatures over the next five months, 11 contracts out of 14 take the OVHcloud default, 2 take Outscale SecNumCloud, 1 takes AWS for integration reasons.
The publisher writes on its blog about the migration trajectory and the technical lessons learnt (notably the difference in the managed-services ecosystem). Several prospects mention that the availability of the SecNumCloud default option weighed positively.
Anti-pattern to avoid#
A European default mention on the website that is not reflected in actual commercial proposals, where AWS is still suggested in practice, does not fulfil the commitment. A European option deliberately priced higher to discourage clients is also a form of circumvention. Conversely, a token commitment that would impose European hosting without any possible alternative would be technically untenable for legitimate edge cases.
Success indicators#
By the 12-month horizon, you can reasonably consider this commitment fulfilled if the default option displayed in your catalogue is a European cloud provider, if your standard commercial proposals actually offer this hosting by default, and if a significant share of new contracts (at least the majority) take this default hosting. Mention of the approach in your Sovereignty Profile reinforces overall coherence.
→ Documented in the dossier#
JSON schema category: preference. Default horizon: 12 months. Applicable to: businesses.