Amid the rapid evolution of modern technologies, Suse, a global leader in open-source solutions for enterprises, revealed on March 23, 2026, from its headquarters in Luxembourg, the results of its inaugural survey titled “Cloud and AI Pulse”. This comprehensive survey showed that an increasing number of major companies are strongly moving toward hybrid cloud adoption at 59 percent, while 16 percent of companies chose private cloud. These strategic shifts come as a result of escalating 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 in the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, India, and Germany. The study deeply examined the impact of artificial intelligence on cloud technology adoption, budget allocations, governance mechanisms, IT priorities, and systems flexibility. 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 the urgent need to support open source and growing concerns over vendor lock-in.
“It was no surprise to see more than half of survey participants confirm that artificial intelligence implementation represents a significant challenge, but what brings optimism is the positive impact of artificial intelligence 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 among our customers, as priorities shift noticeably toward more flexible, scalable, and rigorously governed tech deployment operations.” – Margaret Dawson, Chief Marketing Officer at Suse
Artificial intelligence imposes new technological priorities
As artificial intelligence increases system complexity and operational risks, enterprise priorities are shifting toward adopting scalable and strictly governed tech solutions. Globally, participants ranked AI implementation either as a critical challenge at 24 percent or a major challenge at 37 percent. When it comes to training artificial intelligence models, digital sovereignty has become an essential and decisive 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 artificial intelligence implementation is a primary item in their annual budget priorities. Interestingly, the situation in Germany saw AI implementation rank only 12th as a critical challenge, yet it 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 return 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 highlighted as powerful strategic options that provide the ability to support sensitive, regulated workloads 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 artificial intelligence. For instance, the building of “private AI factories” is expected to reach a 20 percent adoption rate this year, according to forecasts published on the Forrester 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 hybrid cloud model deployments for workloads requiring complete digital sovereignty.
- 16 percent of organizations rely entirely on private cloud environments to ensure maximum protection.
- More than half of participants, specifically 51 percent, intend to increase spending on expansion across multi-cloud environments.
- Nearly half of participants, about 46 percent, are increasing investments to support open source at the enterprise level.
On average, the top three global priorities were summarized as follows:
- Addressing skills gaps and tech talent shortages.
- Enhancing the cybersecurity posture.
- Effective implementation of artificial intelligence technologies.
United States concerns and priorities: IT resilience
In the United States, concerns related to single-vendor dependency and IT resilience are turning from mere worries into core priorities requiring decisive action. Regarding the concept of digital sovereignty, 39 percent of American companies express deep concern regarding 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 participants in the US indicate that vendor lock-in is a critical and major issue. Compared to other surveyed nations, 64 percent of American participants noted that IT resilience is the most important technological priority of all, a rate much higher than the global average of 55 percent. Additionally, 53 percent see enhancing 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 and AI Pulse” survey was conducted with the participation of 596 senior technology leaders in global enterprises, including executive directors and C-level decision-makers who hold strategic responsibilities in selecting software tools and drafting 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 the 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 avoid the issue of single-vendor cloud lock-in, granting them greater operational flexibility.
How does artificial intelligence affect the concept of digital sovereignty?
Implementing artificial intelligence 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 organizational data during the training of these models.
What are the most prominent technical challenges facing the United States in this field?
The most prominent challenges in the US involve addressing vendor lock-in concerns, ensuring IT resilience, and effectively implementing artificial intelligence, which constitutes a critical challenge and the second biggest hurdle despite being the top priority in budget allocation.
What is the role of open source in these strategic transformations?
Open source plays a pivotal role in providing greater independence for organizations and reducing their reliance on public cloud providers, justifying the move by 46 percent of companies to increase investments to support and deploy open-source technologies across their infrastructure.
