VMware Inc. today announced an expansion of its Sovereign Cloud initiative that aims to help companies identify and engage with trusted national and regional cloud service providers.

The initiative was launched last year for customers with unique requirements for data sovereignty and scrutiny of data access and control. Many of VMware’s customers must adhere to regulations that place strict limits on who can access their data, meaning they have no choice but to use trusted cloud providers located in the regions where they do business.

The expansion adds new VMware Sovereign Cloud designated partners to its list, namely Ionos SE, Saudi Telecom Co., Sopra Steria AS and the Telecommunications and Digital Government Regulatory Authority of the United Arab Emirates. With this, VMware said it now counts 14 participants in the initiative that cover distinct sovereign regions across the U.S, Australia, Canada, Germany, India, Italy, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Sweden, the UAE and the U.K.

VMware said customers in regulated industries such as the banking and finance, healthcare, local retail and e-commerce, energy, defense, intelligence, regional telecom and public sectors can tap its services via its partners with full confidence that they’ll meet local rules around data sovereignty.

Each of VMware’s Sovereign Cloud partners has committed to ensuring data privacy and compliance, the company explained, helping customers enjoy the benefits of cloud while adhering to laws and regulations around data privacy. Challenges around data sovereignty, data residency, data access, jurisdiction and control are met with an assurance that customers’ most sensitive data is managed securely, VMware said.

Along with its new partners, VMware said it’s offering new developer cloud services powered by VMware Tanzu through its Sovereign Cloud partners. Tanzu is a suite of tools for customers to build, deploy and manage modern applications that are hosted in software containers – which isolate the individual components of those apps — and managed with the open-source Kubernetes orchestration software.

VMware said its partner cloud providers can extend their offerings beyond basic infrastructure and platforms as a service to provide customers with application modernization services. That includes fully managed developer-ready clouds hosted on the customer’s premises, hosted private clouds in partner data centers and managed services on leading hyperscaler clouds, VMware said.

Rajeev Bhardwaj, vice president of product management at VMware’s cloud infrastructure and business group, said the new Tanzu data services will enable the company’s sovereign cloud-focused partners to expand their data and application transformation portfolios to accelerate cloud adoption.

“This will allow customers to remain within Sovereign regions and jurisdictional control while achieving cutting edge transformation at scale,” Bhardwaj said.

Image: VMware