The Sovereign Cloud Exit

Every platform shift in computing has opened with the same move. The vendor floods the market with a price so low that resistance feels irrational, you build your operations on top of it, and then the relationship matures. Cloud artificial intelligence is now firmly out of its honeymoon. The tokens that powered your first pilots were sold at a loss to win your habit, and the bill for that subsidy is coming due across the whole sector at once.

Most organisations believe that because they can download their logs, they have an audit trail. They have records. They do not necessarily have provenance. Provenance is the ability to prove, to a sceptical outsider years later, exactly what was decided, by which model, on what inputs, at what moment, and that the record of it has not been altered since. A log file sitting in a bucket controlled by your vendor satisfies none of those conditions on its own.

The clearest way I have found to explain the exit is the oldest one in property. There is renting and there is owning, and the choice between them is rarely about this month's cost. A tenant pays less to begin, carries no maintenance, and can leave easily, but builds no equity and lives subject to the landlord's terms. An owner pays more upfront, carries the upkeep, and in exchange gains control, predictability and an asset that is theirs. Neither is wrong. They are answers t