Accenture, in partnership with Google Cloud, has launched a new Accenture and Google Cloud Sovereign Centre in Brussels, a sovereign cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) innovation hub with a dedicated training facility in Brussels.
The new centre comes as governments and regulated sectors in Europe such as finance, healthcare and defence look to scale AI adoption while maintaining control over data, security and compliance. Accenture and Google Cloud are helping clients innovate while maintaining operational resilience and continuity in increasingly complex geopolitical and regulatory environments. Through the Accenture Google Business Group, centre resources will combine Accenture’s industry, data and AI expertise with Google Cloud’s distributed cloud technologies.
This facility showcases Google Distributed Cloud air-gapped, which is designed to support organizations with strict sovereignty, resilience, and regulatory requirements. The centre provides organisations a space to innovate, train, explore, design and validate secure cloud and AI solutions in an air-gapped environment, supporting mission critical workloads that cannot be connected to public networks.
It also provides a collaborative environment for organisations, independent software vendors and ecosystem partners to develop proofs of concept, demonstrate solutions and co-innovate on sovereign cloud and AI use cases.
Enabling transformation in regulated and sovereign environments
Accenture and Google Cloud will focus on helping organisations reinvent across three priority areas:
- Sovereign cloud and AI adoption: Organisations can design and validate AI-enabled use cases that align with regulatory, security and data sovereignty requirements, supporting critical services across government, defence and other regulated industries.
- Modernisation of mission critical systems: Organisations can modernise legacy systems, improve resilience and increase operational efficiency without compromising control. These capabilities support hybrid and distributed deployment models, allowing organisations to modernise at a pace aligned with regulatory and operational constraints.
- Workforce enablement and skills development: The centre will also serve as a global hub for enablement and training, supporting the development of specialised skills required to operate and manage sovereign cloud and AI platforms. Accenture will train and deploy dedicated resources to help organisations adopt and scale these capabilities globally, reducing risk and accelerating time to value.
This new initiative builds on the longstanding relationship between Accenture and Google Cloud and reflects a shared commitment to supporting Digital Transformation on local terms. It is also part of Accenture’s broader strategy to enable a balanced and interoperable sovereign technology ecosystem across Europe. By combining hands-on experience, technical validation and industry expertise, Accenture and Google Cloud aim to help organisations responsibly adopt cloud and AI technologies while maintaining trust, security and sovereignty.
Mauro Macchi, EMEA CEO at Accenture said: “Trust, compliance and sovereignty are critical to public services and regulated industries as they accelerate AI adoption. However, even in these sectors, levels of control needed across data, models and infrastructure can vary according to use cases. It’s rarely a full-control-or-nothing decision. The centre we are opening in Brussels with Google Cloud will enable our clients to explore and validate different sovereign AI options and make the right decisions according to their needs, so they can innovate with confidence. It will also enable them to train their people in sovereign AI skills, building in-house expertise to maintain appropriate oversight.”
