# What Buyers Will Actually Pay For

**The top-rated requirement is somebody else able to keep the software running.** If workloads are staying with the largest cloud providers, readiness has to come from somewhere other than where data sits. Asked what they need for sovereignty, buyers rate an alternative source of support and maintenance above everything else measured, well ahead of the next requirement. The requirement is strongest in the Americas and weakest in the Middle East, but even there 98% call it at least moderately important.

Buyers rated support as a set of separate requirements: a second source of support and maintenance if the primary vendor fails; access to the vendor's engineers and community; commercial support for the open-source code they run, with service-level guarantees, patching, and legal indemnification; a formal plan for open-source software that loses its support; and a say in who staffs the support. A vendor's support offer has to answer all five.

**Respondents that rate an alternative source of support and maintenance critical:** 64%

**Organizations that give open source a role in their sovereignty strategy:** 87.1%

**Respondents for whom sovereignty is decisive at subscription renewal:** 43.7%

> We require fail-safe vendors we can flip to if the primary fails. We identify a competitive vendor, pilot both, and choose the best, always keeping a second option in reserve.
> — *CISO & Cloud Architect, enterprise health insurer in North America*

> Enterprise support is non-negotiable. Even a millisecond of downtime is unaffordable, because price swings in the stock market mean our customers can't absorb losses caused by us.
> — *CTO, enterprise financial services organization in APAC*

**The top requirement is a second source of support, and support has several parts**
*All respondents*

| Category | All respondents |
|--- |--- |
| A second source of support if the primary vendor fails | 64% |
| Access to the vendor's engineers and community | 54% |
| Commercial support for the open source they run | 52% |

*Source: n=1,940 respondents, normalized by region*

**Support Staff Must Be Nationals or Hold Clearances**
*All respondents*

| Category | All respondents |
|--- |--- |
| Required for sensitive workloads | 30% |
| Preferred but not required | 40% |
| No such requirement | 30% |

*Source: n=1,940 respondents, normalized by region*

## Open source underpins 87.1% of sovereignty strategy, but leaders worry most about running it unsupported

Open source has a role in 87.1% of sovereignty strategies, and is foundational for 37.1% of them. It is chosen for the rights the code carries: to inspect it, patch it, and move it without asking permission. Confidence in open source carries real anxiety with it: concern about running unsupported open-source packages is the highest level of concern on any item measured (55.8% of respondents), and it is even more concerning among the organizations that call open source foundational than anywhere else. Sovereignty is creating demand for commercially supported open source (important or critical for 91% of respondents): the code grants the right to inspect, patch, and move it, and the support contract makes that right usable on a system the business cannot afford to lose. In Futurum's interviews, no C-suite officer was ambivalent about this: unsupported open source was a non-starter for critical systems. Where open source was used, they wanted it commercially supported and able to run consistently across the cloud, private, and local environments their estates require.

**Why open source suits sovereignty**
*All respondents · The leading reasons are verification, maintenance, and exit.*

| Category | All respondents |
|--- |--- |
| Transparency and auditability of the code | 35% |
| Community-driven security and patching | 34% |
| Licensing and cost independence | 28% |
| Freedom from lock-in | 28% |
| Control over the roadmap | 27% |
| Ability to self-support or switch providers | 27% |

*Source: n=1,940 respondents, normalized by region*

> Open source is probably more secure than closed source, but support is the issue. I wouldn't switch to an open-source ERP or point-of-sale system without support for critical failures.
> — *CIO, enterprise retailer in EMEA*

## Sovereignty has entered the renewal cycle, ahead of the ability to act on it

Sovereignty has become a deciding factor in infrastructure renewals, considered in 86% of reviews and renewals, and critical in 43.7%. Buyers who treat sovereignty as decisive at renewal already know what they want: a second source of support and commercially supported open source, at far higher rates than everyone else. They are no more able to move a critical workload within 30 days than anyone else. A renewal is the one point where a buyer holds real leverage. Most are using it to add sovereignty language to contracts, ahead of a documented exit path or an identified second source of support.

**Sovereignty is decisive at renewal, by region**
*All respondents*

| Category | Sovereignty is a decisive factor at renewal |
|--- |--- |
| North America | 48% |
| EMEA | 32% |
| APAC | 48% |
| LATAM | 47% |
| All respondents | 44% |

*Source: n=289 / 470 / 979 / 202 / 1,940 respondents*

**An alternative source of support is critical, by region**
*All respondents*

| Category | Alternative source of support critical |
|--- |--- |
| North America | 72% |
| EMEA | 52% |
| APAC | 61% |
| LATAM | 71% |
| All respondents | 64% |

*Source: n=289 / 470 / 979 / 202 / 1,940 respondents*

## Buyers judge a sovereignty-ready vendor on reliability, not on where the data sits

Asked in their own words what makes a vendor ready for sovereignty work, buyers name reliability and operational resilience first, well ahead of every other reason offered, including data location. Security and data protection place second, regulatory compliance third; every sovereignty-specific reason combined still does not outrank reliability alone. Practitioners interviewed at length gave the same answer unprompted: each one, asked directly, named a capability, a reputation, or a relationship. The reliability buyers mean is reliability under disruption: a second source of support ranks first among requirements, and being unable to leave ranks first among feared risks, because a single provider, however dependable, cannot keep a customer running through its own failure. For most buyers, sovereignty opened the conversation, and reliability and operational outcomes led them to invest.

**Buyers name reliability first and data location last**
*Open-ended, coded*

| Category | Value |
| --- | --- |
| Reliability and operational resilience | 26% |
| Security and data protection | 18% |
| Regulatory compliance | 17% |
| Transparency and accountability | 14% |
| Track record | 11% |
| Data residency alone | 5% |

*n=1,221 · coded open-end responses, not a survey tabulation*

**What to Do About It**

Identify where support would come from if your primary vendor could not provide it, and raise it at the next renewal rather than the next incident.