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# 2026 — the year of digital sovereignty (at least for me)
- URL: https://zahradnik.io/2026-the-year-of-digital-sovereignty-at-least-for-me/
- Published: 2026-01-19T19:39:45.000Z
- Updated: 2026-01-19T19:39:45.000Z
- Description: Digital sovereignty as a systems problem, not a buzzword problem.
- Author: Vladimír Záhradník
- Tags: Field notes, Digital sovereignty, Systems architecture, Self-Hosting, Infrastructure

**Originally published on LinkedIn. Reformatted for Medium / zahradnik.io.**

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You can hear the buzzword *“sovereign cloud”* popping up more and more recently.  
The definition, however, often feels almost anti-sovereign — and occasionally amusing.

In simple terms, it usually means:

*A cloud that obeys local government laws.*

My definition of a sovereign cloud is much simpler — and, I believe, more powerful:

**Servers located on my premises, running software authorized by me, serving my company’s needs.**

People often forget that the very first Google servers were built from consumer-grade hardware.  
That’s exactly what I’m doing today.

I bought refurbished PCs.  
I built new machines from spare parts (and yes, I had some RAM left).  
I designed my own strategies for backups, replication, and security.

Right now, I’m in the middle of implementing these designs.  
Two weeks in, I’m not even 50% done.

But I already have experience worth sharing.

This week, I’m opening the topic of **digital sovereignty** — lightly at first.  
We’ll go deeper in the coming months.

One brick at a time.