Application Catalog Sovereignty: Your Stack, Your Infrastructure, Swiss Operations
When you outsource your database, identity provider, secrets manager, and platform tooling to a single vendor, that vendor holds the keys to your entire application stack. Jurisdiction, data residency, and operational control matter more for a full-stack engagement than for any single service.
US hyperscaler managed services (AWS RDS, Azure Database, Google Cloud SQL, Amazon ElastiCache, Azure AD) run on US-owned infrastructure under US law. The CLOUD Act allows US authorities to access your data without Swiss judicial process, regardless of which region you select.
The VSHN Application Catalog runs every service on infrastructure you choose: on-premises, Swiss public cloud (Cloudscale, Exoscale), or hybrid. Your data never leaves your control.
Why the Application Catalog is a strong choice for sovereignty
- Infrastructure-agnostic: You choose the provider. VSHN operates on your Kubernetes cluster, not on shared multi-tenant infrastructure
- Open source by default: PostgreSQL, MariaDB, Redis, Keycloak, OpenBao, Forgejo, NGINX, Varnish, vLLM and LiteLLM are open source with standard APIs. The one commercially licensed option in the catalog is EDB Postgres Advanced Server, which exists for moving Oracle workloads and is chosen deliberately
- No vendor lock-in: Standard protocols, standard data formats. If you leave, your data and configuration come with you
- Swiss operations: with the Swiss-only support option, nobody outside Switzerland accesses your systems. No subcontracting
- Single contract: One SLA, one vendor, one legal relationship under Swiss law
Managed services sovereignty compared
| Dimension | AWS Managed Services | Azure Managed Services | GCP Managed Services | VSHN Application Catalog |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ownership | Amazon (USA) | Microsoft (USA) | Google (USA) | VSHN AG (Switzerland) |
| Governing law | US law | US law | US law | Swiss law |
| CLOUD Act | Exposed | Exposed | Exposed | Not exposed |
| Data location | Configurable (EU regions) | Configurable (EU regions) | Configurable (EU regions) | Switzerland or your DC |
| Source code | Proprietary service layer | Proprietary service layer | Proprietary service layer | Open source, with EDB as a named commercial option |
| Infrastructure choice | AWS only | Azure only | GCP only | Customer chooses provider |
| Staff access from abroad | Support staff worldwide, including USA and India | Teams worldwide; remote access from outside EU and EFTA for repairs | Maintenance and support staff in 30+ countries, including USA and India | VSHN Canada for night-time scheduled work; none with the Swiss-only option |
| Certifications | SOC 2 | SOC 2, ISO 27001 | SOC 2 | ISO 27001, ISAE 3402 Type II |
| Continuity if the provider itself fails | Redundant across AWS's own regions, not against AWS itself | Redundant across Azure's own regions, not against Azure itself | Redundant across GCP's own regions, not against GCP itself | Can run across providers, for example Cloudscale and Exoscale, so one provider's own outage does not take the deployment down |
No single provider can be redundant against a provider other than itself. A customer asking Cloudscale for object storage replicated across two sites cannot get it from Cloudscale alone: Cloudscale does not replicate across its own zones the way Exoscale does, and a provider that does is still bounded by its own infrastructure. VSHN assembles across providers, for example Cloudscale and Exoscale, so continuity does not depend on any one of them staying up. HIN, a VSHN customer in Swiss healthcare, already runs its own business continuity management on a multi-provider setup for the same reason. In practice the application itself usually keeps running in one site while only the data layer replicates across both, which is what most requirements actually ask for and what keeps the price sane. Backups live at a third location outside the replication chain, encrypted, so a deletion or a bug that replicates faithfully does not take the backup with it. Running across two providers also adds a second subprocessor to name in the contract, which costs something in a cantonal bid that rewards a short subprocessor list.
Compliance and regulatory readiness
VSHN is ISO 27001 certified since 2017 and operates from Switzerland, with system access restricted to Switzerland under the Swiss-only support option. AppCat deployments on private cloud infrastructure support:
- FINMA Circular 2018/3: Outsourcing requirements for Swiss financial institutions. VSHN provides audit documentation, Swiss-only operations, and contractual commitments for regulated customers
- EU DORA (Digital Operational Resilience Act): ICT third-party risk management provisions. AppCat on private cloud supports your ICT third-party risk management with ISO 27001 certified operations and an ISAE 3402 Type II report your auditors can request
- NIS2 Directive: Supply chain security requirements for essential and important entities. VSHN's ISO 27001 controls map to NIS2 Article 21 requirements
- GDPR / Swiss DPA: Swiss data residency by default. EU adequacy decision covers Swiss-EU data transfers
VSHN sovereignty self-assessment
We applied the EU's Cloud Sovereignty Framework (v1.2.1, October 2025) to our own services. This framework was used to score providers in the EU's EUR 180M sovereign cloud tender in April 2026. Three pure-European providers achieved SEAL-3, while a consortium involving Google Cloud scored only SEAL-2.
This is a self-assessment, not a formal SEAL certification. We publish it for transparency so customers can evaluate our sovereignty profile using the same structured criteria the EU uses.
| # | Dimension | Weight | Assessment | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SOV-1 | Strategic | 15% | Strong | Swiss AG under Swiss law, no foreign parent (Commercial Register) |
| SOV-2 | Legal | 10% | Strong | Swiss law (GTC), no CLOUD Act, EU adequacy decision |
| SOV-3 | Data & AI | 10% | Strong | Swiss DCs by default. Customer chooses infrastructure provider. Sovereign key management via Managed OpenBao + Swiss HSM |
| SOV-4 | Operational | 15% | Strong | Swiss 24/7 ops, Swiss-only support option. All services on vanilla Kubernetes |
| SOV-5 | Supply Chain | 20% | Strong | Infrastructure-agnostic, customer chooses provider. Open-source software |
| SOV-6 | Technology | 15% | Strong | Open source by default, with EDB Postgres Advanced Server as the one commercially licensed option. VSHN contributes to K8up (CNCF Sandbox) and Project Syn |
| SOV-7 | Security | 10% | Strong | ISO 27001, ISAE 3402 Type II, Swiss SOC. FINMA-regulated customers |
| SOV-8 | Environmental | 5% | Moderate | DC operators: Green Datacenter AG (ISO 22301/27001/27701), Exoscale sustainability. VSHN CSR policy |
Overall: SEAL-3 equivalent, the same level achieved by the winners of the EU's own sovereignty tender. No bidder in the EU's own tender reached SEAL-4: it requires complete EU control with no critical non-EU dependencies, and every cloud provider depends on hardware made in Asia and the US and on open-source projects governed by US-based foundations such as the Linux Foundation and CNCF.
Try Swiss infrastructure: Servala (managed services, free trial), Exoscale (Swiss IaaS). Want help choosing? Contact us.
Get a sovereignty assessment for your stack
Running managed services on US hyperscalers and concerned about jurisdictional risk? We assess your sovereignty profile against the EU framework and plan a migration to Swiss-operated infrastructure with the VSHN Application Catalog.