Microsoft and Core42, a G42 company specializing in sovereign cloud and AI infrastructure, have jointly released a comprehensive whitepaper titled “Balancing Innovation and Compliance in the AI Era.” The paper offers a strategic framework for technology leaders to navigate data sovereignty, cloud adoption, and AI deployment within highly regulated sectors.
Central to the whitepaper is the Core42 Sovereign Public Cloud powered by Microsoft Azure, which blends Microsoft’s hyperscale infrastructure with Core42’s sovereign controls platform. This solution enables a secure, compliant, and scalable cloud environment tailored for sectors such as government, healthcare, finance, and energy—eliminating the traditional trade-off between innovation and regulatory compliance.
The whitepaper emphasizes sovereign cloud as a foundational necessity, especially as UAE public cloud spending surges, projected to reach $6.47 billion by 2028. It highlights critical features including in-country data centers, regulatory policy packs, advanced encryption, automated compliance monitoring, and integration with national security.
Showcasing transformative UAE use cases, the document highlights AI-driven fraud detection in finance, predictive diagnostics in healthcare, citizen data protection in government, and real-time analytics in oil and gas. These examples demonstrate sovereign clouds’ dual role in security and sector-specific innovation.
This initiative aligns with the UAE’s digital sovereignty goals, with Abu Dhabi investing Dhs13 billion to become the world’s first AI-native government by 2027. Core42 and Microsoft’s sovereign cloud platform supports over 11 million daily digital interactions between government, citizens, and businesses.
The whitepaper also provides practical guidance for CIOs and CTOs to transition to sovereign cloud environments, recommending data classification, workload prioritization, KPI measurement, and selecting sovereign-ready providers.
Microsoft and Core42’s partnership represents more than infrastructure; it forms a secure, AI-native ecosystem that empowers UAE institutions to innovate confidently while maintaining national data control—offering a model of sovereignty without compromise in an increasingly regulated digital world.
