Regain control over your digital infrastructure

An independent digital foundation for your organization

The call for digital sovereignty in the Netherlands is growing louder. Not only for public and semi-public organizations, but also private companies. Dependency on a few foreign tech giants threatens the autonomy of every organization. Whether it’s the shifting geopolitical landscape or the increasingly strict requirements of the Netherlands Digitalisation Strategy (NDS), maintaining ownership over your own technology has become a necessity.

Your email, communications, calendar or file sharing: Everything is locked into the same provider. But what if we can help you make the first step towards more digital autonomy? We can start with your custom digital products. Then service by service, we shift the backend under your control. Closer to home, with less geopolitical risks. You take back control of your data and technology with a clear action plan, aligned with Dutch and European guidelines.

At De Voorhoede, we view digital sovereignty as the freedom to choose. It is about ensuring your services remain available and your data truly belongs to you, without being locked into the ecosystem of a single dominant market player.

Why prioritize digital sovereignty now?

The urgency for digital sovereignty is driven by a shift from "cloud-first" to “sovereignty-first" thinking. Leading Dutch public institutions are already setting the pace. The City of Amsterdam has committed to a 2035 roadmap where vital processes run on European infrastructure and at least 30% of cloud storage is locally anchored.

• Align with (upcoming) National Strategy: The Dutch government is committed to the "Open source, unless" principle. An expert review ensures your digital roadmap is in sync with the NDS and future-proofed against evolving regulations like NIS2 and the AI Act.

• Escape Vendor Lock-in: Organizations are trapped in a single ecosystem like Microsoft or Google. It creates dependency on your provider’s roadmap and pricing, eliminating the ability to innovate or respond to local needs. 

• Strengthen Geopolitical Resilience: Current geopolitics can make the world unpredictable. Hosting sensitive data on European soil protects you from foreign legislation, such as the US Cloud Act, and ensures your services stay online regardless of international policy shifts.

Improve your sovereignty in 5 steps

We follow a clear, technical process to turn the complex topic of digital sovereignty into a practical roadmap. We believe you can only manage what you can measure. By auditing your tech stack against key indicators like vendor lock-in and data portability, we give you a concrete score for your digital sovereignty.

Step 1. Defining scope and requirements

We begin by defining what parts of your digital landscape require a review. Not every service needs the same level of protection: while a utility might run in the US, your core data may require hosting in Europe, the EU or specifically the Netherlands. Together, we align these preferences with your broader needs on security, performance or compatibility.

Step 2. Technical deep-dive

We investigate your current web and front-end stack and map dependencies. This includes analyzing your hosting, cloud providers, and CDNs, but also checking how tied your frontend is to your backend.

Step 3. Independent report

We investigate your current web and front-end stack and map dependencies. This includes analyzing your hosting, cloud providers, and CDNs, but also checking how tied your frontend is to your backend.

Step 4. Pragmatic recommendations

We investigate your current web and front-end stack and map dependencies. This includes analyzing your hosting, cloud providers, and CDNs, but also checking how tied your frontend is to your backend.

Step 5. Joint review session

We investigate your current web and front-end stack and map dependencies. This includes analyzing your hosting, cloud providers, and CDNs, but also checking how tied your frontend is to your backend.

Why do a sovereignty review at De Voorhoede?

Our developers have experience migrating infrastructure to European alternatives. To set a leading example of a pro-European movement, we currently experiment with pilot projects and share these findings publicly. Our recent projects involve custom integrations or migrating our website to the European cloud Scaleway.

We see that most organizations and institutions recognize the urgency, yet little action is taken across the field. With our seniority and hands-on mentality, we are able to implement the report findings and move things forward. This shifts your organization towards a proactive, flexible and future-proof digital environment.

Netherlands Digitalisation Strategy (NDS)

Launched July 2025, the Netherlands Digitalisation Strategy (NDS) serves as the primary roadmap for the country's digital transition. The main goal: sovereign-by-design. A central pillar of this 2025 strategy is to strengthen Cloud Sovereignty, a policy formally adopted in July 2025 to ensure that secure, sovereign digital infrastructure becomes the standard for all public systems by mid-2026.

With the recent formation of the NDS Council in September 2025, the government has intensified its mandate for collective acceleration toward digital resilience. For public organizations, this translates into a concrete expectation: by 2026, new projects must default to local or EU-based hosting to maintain strategic independence over critical processes and data.

A Dutch shift fueled by a European movement for digital resilience

We see that the transition towards a sovereign tech stack is accelerating. Digital independence in the Netherlands has moved from a strategic ideal to a phased mandate. As we look toward 2030, the focus is shifting from policy to technical implementation, ensuring that the foundation of our digital society remains resilient and under local control.

• The Solvinity acquisition: The acquisition of Dutch provider Solvinity by US-based Kyndryl in late 2025 sparked a national debate over the control of vital infrastructure like DigiD. A reminder for public institutions that true sovereignty requires a provider-agnostic architecture to minimize the risks of foreign legislation, like the US Cloud Act.

• Private Sector Data Localization: Driven by an $80B shift to sovereign cloud, 20% of workloads are migrating to local providers. Companies in Finance and Healthcare are adopting "Hybrid IT" to protect sensitive IP and avoid 7% turnover fines under the 2026 EU Cloud & AI Act.

• Amsterdam’s "Autonomous, Unless" Strategy: Launched in early 2026, Amsterdam’s new Sourcing and Cloud Strategy mandates an "autonomous, unless" approach for all procurement. By prioritizing national and European solutions, the city aims for full autonomy by 2035, running large-scale pilots to transition critical services away from foreign big-tech ecosystems.

We are moving from “cloud-first” to “autonomous, unless”. Take the lead by owning your data and defining your own roadmap in a transparent, independent digital environment.