European Software Alternatives: Assessing Vendor Dependence Across Your Application Portfolio

For years, software was bought on functionality, security, cost and ease of implementation. Today another consideration is quickly gaining ground among CIOs, enterprise architects and application portfolio managers: digital sovereignty.

Organizations increasingly want to know not only what software they use, but also:

These questions matter more every year, as organizations look for more control over their digital future.

Why digital sovereignty matters

Digital sovereignty is an organization’s ability to stay in control of its digital assets, technology choices and strategic dependencies.

For many organizations, software has become as critical as electricity or telecommunications. Daily operations run on cloud services, SaaS platforms, identity providers and productivity tools, often from vendors based outside the home country. These technologies deliver a lot of value, but they also introduce new forms of dependency.

Questions that used to be purely technical now reach the boardroom:

• How dependent are we on a single vendor?
• How exposed are we to geopolitical developments?
• Do we have alternatives if circumstances change?
• Which business capabilities depend on foreign software providers?

Answering them starts with understanding your application portfolio.

The hidden risk of vendor concentration

Many organizations believe their software landscape is diverse. Once the application data is analyzed, a different picture often emerges. Take a typical modern enterprise:

Each of these choices may have been justified on its own: productivity, identity management, cloud infrastructure, reporting, collaboration and business applications. Viewed together, they create a significant dependency on a single vendor ecosystem. The same pattern occurs with Google, Amazon, Oracle, Salesforce and SAP.

The catch is that these dependencies are rarely visible when applications are evaluated one by one. They only become apparent when you analyze the portfolio as a whole.

Why vendor dependence reached the boardroom

Recent events have shown that dependence on software vendors is no longer just a technical issue.

For enterprise architects and application portfolio managers, the lesson is not about one particular vendor. It is about understanding dependency, and it comes down to one question:

If a critical supplier became unavailable tomorrow, would we understand the impact on our business capabilities?

For many organizations, the honest answer is: not really.

Why application inventories fall short

Most application inventories, CMDBs and asset repositories focus on operational information: application names and owners, lifecycle status, support contacts and technical relationships. That is valuable, but it rarely answers sovereignty questions:

• In which country is the software vendor headquartered?
• What share of the portfolio depends on US-based providers?
• Which capabilities rely exclusively on foreign vendors?
• Are European alternatives available?

As a result, many organizations have a software inventory but lack software intelligence. The difference, side by side:

Four analyses to assess vendor dependence

A practical sovereignty assessment does not require replacing any software. It starts with visibility, built from four analyses.

1. Vendor concentration

Start with how many applications each vendor supplies: the total number, the number of critical applications and the strategic capabilities each vendor supports. High concentration usually means higher dependency.

2. Geographic distribution

Next, map where your software suppliers are headquartered, for example the Netherlands, Germany, France, other EU countries, the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada and Asia-Pacific. This gives a first view of how your portfolio is spread across jurisdictions.

3. Capability dependency

Some vendors support several critical business capabilities at once. Ask which capabilities depend most on a single vendor, where the concentration risks are and which capabilities lack meaningful alternatives. These relationships show where your strategic exposure lies.

4. Cloud dependency

Vendor dependence is closely linked to cloud dependence. Know which applications are SaaS and which still run on-premises, which cloud providers are represented and whether a small group of providers dominates the portfolio. Together, the four analyses give a complete picture of your dependency risk.

The role of European software alternatives

Digital sovereignty does not mean abandoning non-European software, and European alternatives are not automatically the better choice. Sovereignty is about making informed decisions, based on:

• your existing dependencies
• the alternatives that are available
• the strategic risks involved
• the business trade-offs of switching

For some capabilities, mature European alternatives already exist. For others, global vendors remain the most practical option.

Why sovereignty belongs in Application Portfolio Management

A software inventory tells you which applications exist. A sovereignty assessment adds who supplies them, where those vendors are located, which capabilities they support and how concentrated your dependencies have become. That context turns application data into intelligence you can act on.

Application Portfolio Management has always weighed cost, business value, lifecycle and technical risk. Just as portfolios are assessed for financial, operational and security risk, more and more organizations now add sovereignty risk to the list:

That makes digital sovereignty a natural extension of modern Application Portfolio Management.

Key takeaways

Frequently asked questions

Sources and further reading

The digital sovereignty debate gained wide attention after reports about restricted access to Microsoft services for an official of the International Criminal Court, following US sanctions against ICC officials:

• Microsoft didn’t cut services to International Criminal Court, its president says (Politico)
• Microsoft’s ICC email block triggers Dutch concerns over dependence on U.S. tech (NL Times)
• How sanctions can weaponize US tech against the ICC (JusticeInfo)
• Microsoft denies having suspended any services to ICC (Techzine)