Amid the rapid evolution of modern technologies, Suse, a global leader in enterprise open-source solutions, revealed on March 23, 2026, from its headquarters in Luxembourg, the results of its inaugural survey titled “Cloud & AI Pulse”. This comprehensive survey showed that a growing number of large enterprises are strongly moving toward hybrid cloud models at 59 percent, while 16 percent of companies have chosen to move toward private cloud. These strategic shifts come as a result of mounting technical and commercial concerns, alongside strict requirements related to the concept of digital sovereignty.
The global survey included the opinions of nearly 600 enterprise IT leaders across the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, India, and Germany. The study deeply examined the impact of artificial intelligence on cloud technology adoption, budget allocation, governance mechanisms, IT priorities, and system resilience. In the United States specifically, amid changes in the global tech landscape, nearly a third of participants—about 31 percent—indicated that digital sovereignty is a top technological priority for this year, driven by an urgent need to support open source and growing concerns over vendor lock-in.
“It was no surprise to see more than half of survey respondents confirm that implementing artificial intelligence presents a significant challenge, but what brings optimism is the positive impact of AI on hybrid and private cloud adoption rates, in addition to reinforcing the concept of digital sovereignty regarding AI model training data. This new data confirms what we observe with our customers, as priorities shift markedly toward more flexible, scalable, and tightly governed technology deployments.” – Margaret Dawson, Chief Marketing Officer at Suse
Artificial intelligence imposes new technological priorities
As AI increases system complexity and operational risks, enterprise priorities are shifting toward adopting scalable and strictly governed technology solutions. Globally, participants ranked AI implementation either as a critical challenge at 24 percent or as a major challenge at 37 percent. When it comes to training AI models, digital sovereignty has become a fundamental and crucial requirement, with 42 percent considering it extremely important and 40 percent classifying it as very important.
Furthermore, four out of five countries participating in the study indicated that AI implementation represents a key item in their annual budget priorities. Interestingly, in Germany, AI implementation ranked only 12th as a critical challenge, but came in second as a budget priority, indicating a noticeable gap between the perceived sense of urgency and the volume of investments allocated to it.
A strong comeback for hybrid cloud and open source
Data across various parts of the world shows that organizations are re-engineering their AI environments to center around control and regulatory compliance. Hybrid and multi-cloud environments have been cited as strong strategic options that provide the ability to support sensitive, regulated, and edge computing workloads while maintaining high levels of operational flexibility.
This shift and gradual move away from the public cloud aligns with broader industry trends fueled by AI. For instance, the construction of “private AI factories” is expected to reach a 20 percent adoption rate this year, according to projections published by Forrester’s blog, alongside growth in on-premises server sales aimed at managing computing costs, improving performance, and meeting data governance requirements.
- 59 percent of organizations plan to prioritize deploying hybrid cloud models for workloads requiring full digital sovereignty.
- 16 percent of organizations rely entirely on private cloud environments to ensure the highest degrees of protection.
- More than half of participants, specifically 51 percent, intend to increase their spending on expansion across multi-cloud environments.
- Nearly half of participants, about 46 percent, are increasing investments to support enterprise-wide open source.
On average, the top three global priorities were summarized as follows:
- Addressing skills gaps and technical talent shortages.
- Strengthening the cybersecurity posture.
- Effective implementation of artificial intelligence technologies.
U.S. concerns and priorities: IT resilience
In the United States, concerns related to single-vendor dependency and IT resilience are shifting from mere apprehensions to core priorities requiring decisive action. Regarding digital sovereignty, 39 percent of U.S. companies express deep concern over the need to reduce reliance on a single cloud provider—a figure that exceeds any other country and far surpasses the global average of 25 percent.
Similarly, in terms of current challenges, 50 percent of U.S. participants indicate that the issue of vendor lock-in is a critical and major concern. Compared to other countries included in the survey, 64 percent of U.S. participants noted that IT resilience is their single most important technology priority, a rate much higher than the global average of 55 percent. Additionally, 53 percent see enhanced security as a top IT priority, while AI implementation ranks first as the top budget priority and second as the biggest critical challenge facing these organizations on their digital transformation journey.
Research report methodology
The “Cloud & AI Pulse” survey was conducted with the participation of 596 senior technology leaders in global enterprises, including executive directors and upper-management decision-makers who hold strategic responsibilities for selecting software tools and shaping IT infrastructure policies, lending high credibility to the findings drawn from this in-depth study.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the main reasons driving organizations to adopt hybrid cloud according to the survey?
Organizations turn to hybrid cloud adoption due to growing commercial and technical concerns, to meet strict digital sovereignty requirements, and to try to avoid the issue of single-cloud-provider lock-in, giving them greater operational flexibility.
How does artificial intelligence impact the concept of digital sovereignty?
Implementing AI models now requires complete control over training data. More than 82 percent of participants considered digital sovereignty extremely important or very important to ensure compliance and protect sensitive enterprise data during the training of these models.
What are the most prominent technical challenges facing the United States in this field?
Key challenges in the U.S. include addressing vendor lock-in concerns, ensuring IT resilience, and effectively implementing artificial intelligence, which constitutes a critical challenge and the second-biggest obstacle despite being the top budget priority.
What is the role of open source in these strategic transformations?
Open source plays a pivotal role in providing greater autonomy for organizations and reducing their reliance on public cloud providers, which explains why 46 percent of companies are increasing their investments to support and deploy open-source technologies across their infrastructure.
