Data residency isn't data sovereignty.
Can you prove — with cryptographic certainty — where your data lives and that no one has tampered with it? A traditional EU cloud provider solves data residency, but the admin still has root access. The provider makes promises, not proofs. For regulated industries where “trust us” isn't good enough, that gap is the problem.
Promises vs Proofs
The Gap
Your EU-hosted AWS instance is still a US company subject to the CLOUD Act. Traditional cloud providers — AWS, Azure, Google Cloud — can be compelled to hand over data regardless of where it's hosted. Data residency tells you where data sits. Data sovereignty proves what happened to it.
European organisations are accelerating moves away from US providers. But replacing one cloud provider with another still leaves you with promises. The question regulators are increasingly asking isn't “where is the data?” — it's “can you prove what happened to it?”
Hybrid Architecture: Proof Where It Matters
Aikin's Approach
Aikin architects the hybrid split across two modes. Cyso (Netherlands) is conventional EU sovereign cloud — Dutch jurisdiction, a signable counterparty, your architecture migrated rather than rebuilt. Cloud Engines are on-chain sovereign cloud — a private ICP subnet with a single signable operator and tamper-proof state, which requires a rebuild into canisters. When both are needed, conventional workloads run on Cyso and tamper-evident records on Cloud Engines.
The deliverable is the architecture and the legal counterparty layer together — the DPAs, the documented sub-processors, and the entity that signs them. Architectural compliance is necessary but never sufficient; the paperwork and the jurisdiction have to line up too.
Honest about the gap: a sovereign-node Cloud Engine (Swiss today) gives you a signable operator in Swiss jurisdiction, which the EU adequacy decision covers; a Cloud Engine on hyperscaler hardware signs cleanly but its metal stays in US-jurisdiction custody. No EU-jurisdiction Cloud Engine exists off the shelf yet. Where a buyer needs exactly that, Aikin says so and designs to the closest lawful alternative rather than overclaiming.
Delivered with you: forward-deployed engineers embed in your team, so you co-own the result. No big-bang migration — phased, the right things first.
- Two modes: Cyso (conventional EU cloud, Dutch jurisdiction) and Cloud Engines (on-chain, single signable operator)
- The deliverable: the architecture and the legal counterparty layer together — DPAs, documented sub-processors, a signable operator
- Cryptographic proof of data location and integrity where the workload needs it
- Off-chain leg in Dutch jurisdiction (Cyso); on-chain leg on EU/Swiss sovereign nodes
- Phased migration — prove the model, then expand
Built for regulated industries
Regulated Enterprises (FinTech, HealthTech)
Industry 4.0 / Manufacturing
Government & Public Sector
Legal & Professional Services
How we work together
1 — Architecture Assessment
Which workloads need verifiable infrastructure vs standard cloud?
2 — Hybrid Design
ICP for sovereignty, Cyso for the rest. Detailed architecture with clear tradeoffs.
3 — Pilot Solution
Do the right things first. Prove the plan works.
4 — Full Solution
Expand once the architecture is validated.
Assess your sovereignty gap
Start with an architecture assessment — which of your workloads need verifiable infrastructure?