Digital sovereignty: Germany in second place worldwide
Finland leads the DSI ranking, Germany scores well across the board. Nextcloud wants to use the survey to show the actual spread of sovereign IT.
(Image: LongQuattro/Shutterstock.com)
Finland leads the way in sovereign IT infrastructure in Europe, followed by Germany in second place. This is the key finding of the new Digital Sovereignty Index (DSI), in which Nextcloud examined the in-house operation of software for file hosting and collaboration, groupware, collaboration, and project management in over 50 countries. The countries received a DSI score, for example, Finland (64.5) and Germany (53.8), with third place going to the Netherlands (36.32).
Whether cloud, AI or M365: hardly any company today can do without software and services from the USA. In view of the political upheavals since the start of Donald Trump's presidency, more and more IT managers are asking themselves: How can I reduce dependencies and make my own IT more sovereign, more resilient and therefore more future-proof? The answers can be found at the IT Summit by heise 2025 on November 11 and 12 in Munich.
The average for all EU countries was 16.31. Norway (6.35), Belgium (7.15), Denmark (6.5), Spain (7.01), and Italy (6.49) scored poorly. Latvia (16.63), Estonia (18.4), and Lithuania (16.1) also scored only averagely, although the Baltic states are known for their digitization efforts. Also interesting: the USA is in 14th place with a score of 14.88. By contrast, Nigeria is at the bottom of all the countries surveyed with a score of 0.03.
Germany does well everywhere
The DSI also distinguishes between different application categories: Germany, for example, leads the Sovereign Data (file storage) category, while Finland stands out in Communication (chats and video telephony) and Software for project management. The areas of groupware and infrastructure technology are more balanced. Nextcloud emphasizes that Germany scores consistently, while many countries have strengths and weaknesses in certain categories. The USA, for example, is particularly poorly represented in the area of groupware, while communication tools stand out negatively in France.
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“The survey shows a high level of awareness in Germany. Private individuals and small and medium-sized enterprises use self-hosted technologies, which are often open source. However, public authorities are still largely dependent on large technology companies. This gap shows that the public administration is heavily dependent on foreign big tech providers, while the population and small businesses actually value digital sovereignty,” says Frank Karlitschek, CEO and founder of Nextcloud.
Visibility is crucial
The data is based on a study conducted on July 28, 2025, in which Nextcloud tapped publicly available servers on the Internet via Shodan.io. Their number was compared with the size of the population, so the DSI value is intended to indicate the visibility of self-operated IT infrastructure in a country. Nextcloud itself points out the weaknesses of the study: servers do not have to be public, and their number says nothing about their actual use. Details on the methodology can be found on the report's website.
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