Digital sovereignty is now impossible to ignore

Bill Doerrfeld | August 20, 2025

My latest feature for CIO.com dives into how global CIOs are responding to digital sovereignty pressures


The cloud is no longer borderless. Rising regional data laws and sovereign cloud mandates are forcing CIOs to act.


In my latest for CIO Online, I spoke with global CIOs and analysts about how they're responding. Digital sovereignty is now "impossible to ignore."


How CIOs are adapting: 


- More data audits

- Repatriating workloads

- Investing in localized or self-architected infrastructure

- Strengthening access control

- Reevaluating partnerships, and more... 


It's not flashy work — but it's necessary to stay compliant and resilient.


Others argue this is largely the cloud provider's problem to solve.


We're in a post-globalization, pro-governance era. It's a challenging macro topic to cover as a journalist, but I think the implications for the data economy are only beginning to unfold.


Check out my full article on CIO for some actionable takes on this evolving area. 


Read: Why CIOs need to respond to digital sovereignty now
Man speaking at
By Bill Doerrfeld December 2, 2025
Excited to share my talk from Nordic APIs' Platform Summit 2025. As the opening talk of the event, I wanted to address the elephant in the room head-on: MCP.
Panel discussion on stage with five speakers and audience in front of a blue screen with speaker names.
By Bill Doerrfeld December 1, 2025
Watch all the great API talks, keynotes, and panel discussions from this year's Nordic APIs Platform Summit, now available on YouTube.
Open source flag leaddev directorplus doerrfeld Block
By Bill Doerrfeld November 28, 2025
Block's open source initiative is helping to build brand reputation, attract talent, boost partnerships, guide internal open source best practices, and aid long-term system reliability.
How CIOs are getting a return from AI
By Bill Doerrfeld November 26, 2025
Achieving ROI with AI requires a mix of strong leadership stewardship upfront, shifting the talent framework, and embedding proper monitoring and governance throughout the lifecycle.
Knowledge base for AI agents
By Bill Doerrfeld November 24, 2025
I recently explored what goes into creating a solid AI agent knowledge base — from the types of data it should contain to the retrieval mechanisms and architecture patterns that support reliable agentic behavior.
linkedin ai assistant hiring agent
By Bill Doerrfeld October 31, 2025
I recently spoke with LinkedIn VP of Engineering Prashanthi Padmanabhan about the making of their Hiring Assistant, an agent recruiters are using to optimize the applicant selection process.
How to fail at platfom engineering
By Bill Doerrfeld October 22, 2025
How do you fail at platform engineering? Make it 100% UI-first. Don't market it. Survey no one. Measure success by who's onboarded. And just copy what others are doing.
Platform summit conference nordic apis stockholm bill doerrfeld
By Bill Doerrfeld October 21, 2025
This year's Platform Summit felt reinvigorated, with many new motivations and areas to discuss. Of course, AI agents and MCP stole the show.
Colorful hot air balloons against a bright blue sky.
By Bill Doerrfeld September 26, 2025
For my latest DirectorPlus edition, I interviewed Thomas Johnson, co-founder and CTO of Multiplayer, about lessons learned releasing their MCP server.
Abstract blue web-like structure, possibly fabric, with a shimmering effect.
By Bill Doerrfeld September 23, 2025
Explore whether vector native databases outperform traditional DBs with vector add-ons for AI. Learn use cases, tradeoffs, and expert insights.