The Power of Choice: Redefining Digital Sovereignty for Global Defense and Security

Digital sovereignty is an increasingly common thread in discussions around global resilience, competitiveness, and autonomy. As an aspiration, it’s influencing everything from technology regulation to trade policy. But we’ve now reached a tipping point where digital sovereignty can no longer be just a policy goal. It’s become a mission-critical requirement for global security.

The world’s security architecture is undergoing a dramatic transformation. The United States aims to field the world’s most powerful and technologically advanced military, backed by the world’s most robust industrial base. At the same time, European nations are increasing their defense budgets and need to turn financial commitments into deployable capability.

This transformation requires a technical foundation for intelligent operations based on digital sovereignty. A foundation that empowers individuals, organizations, and governments to innovate, optimize, and collaborate at scale. Only then can they meet the continuously shifting security needs of today and tomorrow.

The necessity of digital sovereignty

For Celonis, digital sovereignty means acting on our belief that people and organizations should have agency over their data, their systems, and their digital future.

Technology should strengthen democratic principles by expanding the ability of people, companies, and nations to decide, act, and improve. We stand for transparency over opacity, accountability over convenience, and choice over dependency. We stand against the use of technology, data, and infrastructure as tools of coercion or control.

That’s why we’re working to build what we believe in—a platform that is resilient, trustworthy, and aligned with the legal and ethical environments in which our customers operate.

A sovereign, interoperable intelligence layer

For over a decade, Celonis has helped the world's leading organizations build a digital twin of their operations. Enterprises can analyze how processes are actually working today, redesign processes to meet the moment, and operate more efficiently to achieve the best possible mission outcomes.

With that digital twin, organizations can effectively integrate AI into their operations—giving AI the context it needs to be effective, deploying it strategically, and ensuring it works alongside their existing tech investments while tracking performance and ROI.

We already work with defense organizations and suppliers, and we are trusted by some of the world’s largest manufacturers operating complex, regulated, mission-critical environments. And with Celonis for Defense & Security, launched this year, we provide a sovereign solution for intelligent operations. It integrates data across systems to accelerate military and industrial operations and helps defense organizations address evolving threat environments.

Celonis strengthens industrial resilience by providing end-to-end visibility across supply chains, mitigating disruptions, and reducing lead-time variability. It enables customers to ensure asset availability and enhance mission readiness by optimizing complex logistics and Maintenance, Repair, and Operations (MRO) cycles. And it accelerates defense modernization by acting as a data integration platform and interoperable intelligence layer that connects legacy systems with modern AI applications.

Building resilience in an uncertain world

Digital sovereignty is often interpreted as isolationist—a solitary wall built around data. But in a modern security environment, such solitary sovereignty can be a vulnerability. True digital sovereignty is about agency: the freedom to decide how we act, how we innovate, and crucially, how we collaborate. It is the power of choice.

Our most pressing challenges will never be solved by siloed intelligence. That’s why we believe digital sovereignty should be shared, not solitary. It is the bridge that allows us to maintain control over our digital destiny while building the interoperable ecosystems required for collective defense.

Modern defense is inherently multilateral. We’re working with our customers and partners to create an open ecosystem rooted in shared standards, mutual benefit, and respect for individual dignity. This demands that we apply our values consistently—to ourselves, our customers, our partners, and our competitors. Values matter most when they are tested, not when they are convenient.