Sovereign IT Event in the Romandie

Understand, Compare, Choose Your Alternatives

On 24 September, we had the pleasure of hosting the first edition of SovereignIT at the Alpha Palmiers in Lausanne. Around the table: professionals from a range of backgrounds, along with Swiss and European vendors, to discuss sovereign alternatives for project management, collaboration and service management.

A big thank you to everyone who contributed to the evening. Here's a look back at the key takeaways.

An intimate format, designed for exchange

No keynote lectures, no comparison tables: we wanted an intimate format that leaves room for real conversations.

• Lightning pitches: each vendor presented, in just a few minutes, what sets their solution apart.
• Discussion tables: participants could exchange ideas and put their questions directly to the vendors.
• Sovereignty quiz and apéro: a lighter moment to test everyone's knowledge, followed by more conversation over a standing dinner.

What we took away

Digital sovereignty is raising more and more questions, and the discussions during the evening confirmed it.

For Atlassian users, the topic has become very concrete: with the end of Data Center planned for 2029, organisations that cannot move to the cloud need to find alternatives. Even with data stored in Switzerland, a cloud hosted by AWS or Google remains subject to US laws such as the CLOUD Act.

Sovereignty is, above all, a degree of control resting on four pillars:

• Legal independence: a vendor and shareholders not exposed to extraterritorial laws.
• Technological control: keeping control of the code by choosing open source.
• Key control: retaining control over the encryption of your data.
• Operational resilience: being able to retrieve your data and switch solutions.

Aiming for total control over each of these pillars is neither realistic nor necessarily desirable. The real task is to assess your dependencies and, depending on your context, choose the appropriate degree of control.

Choosing a sovereign alternative also, and above all, means finding the right partner to adopt it and develop it further. That's exactly what these face-to-face meetings are for.

Thank you to the vendors

A big thank you to the vendors who presented their solutions and hosted the discussion tables, both on site and remotely. You can download the vendors' presentations, including all demo slides, here 👇

• Cockpit ITSM: a unified, simple and sovereign ITSM, ITAM, ITOM and ESM platform combining performance, transparency and proximity. An agile, high-performance alternative to the market giants, with clear pricing and no hidden costs.
  More information: https://www.cockpit-itsm.com/ and https://vimeo.com/cockpititsm
  
• Sovara : the European alternative to Atlassian, combining the functionality of Jira and Confluence in a single solution. The platform can be hosted in the cloud (with full sovereignty) or in a data centre, offers attractive and stable pricing models, and is future-ready thanks to its AI-native, API-first architecture.
  More information: https://www.rready.com/sovara‍
• Windshift: a self-hosted, open-source work management platform developed in Switzerland and designed as an alternative to Jira. It brings together projects, workflows, testing, time tracking and a customer portal, builds on concepts your teams already know, and imports your Jira Cloud or Data Center projects with their full context.
  Link to install an instance: https://windshift.sh/SovereignIT‍
• Phonemos: a single, sovereign platform for documentation, governance, project tracking and service desk. Designed and operated in Switzerland and ISO 27001 certified, it can be deployed in the Swiss cloud or in your own data centre, with easy import from Confluence or SharePoint.
  More information: https://www.phonemos.com/

Thanks also to the Alpha Palmiers by Fassbind for hosting us.

What's next?

This first edition left us wanting to continue the conversation. A next edition is already in the works, this time in German-speaking Switzerland.

Would you like to take part, or discuss your sovereignty challenges in the meantime? Feel free to get in touch!