Report on Sovereign Cloud Infrastructure in India released at the Defence Tech Day

2026-09-29 11:55:13 Technology

New Delhi, September 29, 2026: The report on "Pathways for Sovereign Cloud Adoption in India," was released at the Defence Tech Day, organised by the United Service Institution of India, the oldest military think tank of India. Prominent military strategists, including the Chief of Defence Staff, Gen. Raja Subramani and senior policymakers from the Department of Telecommunications were present at the Defence Tech Day. The report was released by Maj. Gen. Pawan Anand, AVSM, PhD (Retd).

The report, authored by the Centre for Digital Economy Policy Research (C-DEP Research) and funded by SAP, proposes a structured pathway for India to progressively secure sovereign control over critical cloud infrastructure, data, operations and technology. The discussions at the event examined emerging approaches to digital engineering and sovereign technology capabilities. The event was organised by Center for Emerging Technologies at USI.

Recognising that complete technological sovereignty cannot be achieved immediately across every layer of the cloud stack, C-DEP has proposed the Bharat Sovereign Cloud Assurance Levels Evaluation (B-SCALE). The framework creates a staged pathway from external technology dependence towards progressively higher levels of Indian control.

Under the framework, B-SCALE 0 represents cloud environments without an India-specific sovereign-control boundary. B-SCALE 1 establishes Indian control over areas including data, operating personnel, administrative access, monitoring, incident response, disaster recovery and server execution. B-SCALE 2 extends this to encryption keys, networks, infrastructure and platform operations, source repositories, updates, supplier approvals and interoperability. B-SCALE 3 represents the highest level, where the complete cloud stack can be operated, modified, recovered and continued within India without unilateral external dependence.

The report introduces the Data, Operational, Legal and Technical (DOLT) model, which evaluates Sovereign Cloud environments across 65 measurable parameters. These parameters assess who controls data and its movement, who operates and recovers the cloud environment, which jurisdiction governs the service, and the degree of sovereign control over servers, networks, cloud platforms, software, supply chains, interoperability and technology dependencies.

Maj. Gen. Pawan Anand, AVSM, PhD (Retd), said: "Technological sovereignty is increasingly becoming an important element of national capability. As defence, communications and critical infrastructure become more dependent on cloud platforms, AI and digitally connected systems, India needs the ability to retain effective control over the technologies on which these systems depend."

The C-DEP Research report argues that measuring percentage localisation based on value of sourcing from within the country, may not be a sufficient criteria to push the country to a faster path to sovereign cloud, as the pathway may get embroiled in accounting challenges. Similar Public Procurement (Preference to Make In India) (PPP-MII) initiatives in telecom had faced situations where the industry had included the civil engineering costs to show adherence to domestic value addition. Hence, the report suggests dictating the components that need to be sourced from within India, based on the maturity of production capacities in the country. This would also send the necessary signals to the industry to setup domestic production capacities in advance of a roadmap with timelines.

The report argues that data localisation alone does not ensure technological sovereignty. Important layers of control may still remain with external entities, including administrator access, encryption keys, network management, software updates, intellectual property and service continuity. Transitioning these layers to domestic control cannot happen overnight. The report therefore proposes an aggressive but practical roadmap, developed in consultation with industry, that sets clear timelines while accounting for genuine implementation challenges.

The central principle is that sovereign-cloud requirements should progressively strengthen as India's domestic technological capabilities expand. A defined roadmap for the domestic development and manufacturing of cloud hardware, software, networks, intellectual property, supply chains and skilled personnel can help create a competitive sovereign technology ecosystem. The report recommends periodically raising sovereignty requirements for critical workloads in line with demonstrated domestic capability, using a graduated framework similar to the BEE star-rating mechanism.

Dr Jaijit Bhattacharya, President, C-DEP, said: "India has reached a stage where the government is pushing digital sovereignty to move from a broad policy objective to a measurable engineering and procurement framework. Sovereignty is not implying that a cloud infrastructure is located within India. The question is whether India can operate, audit, recover, modify and continue critical digital services independently. B-SCALE framework provides a practical pathway for progressively increasing that control as domestic capabilities develop."

Through the DOLT and B-SCALE frameworks, C-DEP seeks to provide policymakers, regulators and public-sector institutions with a common framework to assess how much sovereign control India actually exercises over a cloud environment, creating a measurable pathway towards greater technological self-reliance and resilience.