Technological sovereignty is becoming a new priority for company leadership.

Prague  28. april 2026

Up to 80% of surveyed CFOs believe their companies could easily switch cloud providers. However, 60% do not have a functional exit strategy. Of those, 40% have none at all and another 20% are not even aware of having one. This means many companies significantly overestimate their ability to switch vendors, as they have never tested a cloud migration in practice. Without a tested exit strategy, claims of easy cloud switching are more illusion than capability. These findings come from a survey on digital sovereignty conducted by Stratox in collaboration with the Czech CFO Club during April.

Perception of independence does not match reality

“Even the first findings show a clear gap between how company leadership evaluates its capabilities and the actual level of technological sovereignty, which remains low among Czech companies. Operationally, companies function well, but strategically they are more dependent than they admit,”

explains Patrik Horný, co-author of the survey and CEO of Stratox. Horný has spent two decades in executive roles such as CEO, CFO, and CIO, as well as advising large transformation projects at companies like Capgemini, PwC, Czech Railways, and ZSSK.

“We focused on CFOs because they are a key part of management decision-making and are responsible for capital, risk, and long-term stability,” adds Dean Brabec, President of the CFO Club.

Boards are making technology decisions without sufficient knowledge

 Another key finding relates to decision-making itself. As many as 67% of companies make decisions about IT architecture at the level of CEO, CFO, or the board, yet only 47% say they have sufficient internal expertise to support these decisions. Some companies operate with incomplete information, and 13% effectively delegate decisions entirely to vendors. This confirms that technology architecture is no longer just an operational IT concern.

 “It belongs at the highest management level. But a board without technological literacy cannot distinguish between architecture that enables future flexibility and one that creates a new form of dependency,” says Horný.

FOs are not expected to design system architectures or select specific technical solutions. That is the role of CIOs, enterprise architects, and other specialists. However, they can no longer operate without a solid understanding of technological trends, modern architectural principles, and the implications of vendor lock-in.

CFOs must be able to co-decide at a conceptual level, ask the right questions, and understand the economic and strategic consequences of architectural decisions over time. While technical teams design the architecture, the investment framework and final accountability remain with leadership.

Risk diversification often exists only on paper

The third finding highlights a false sense of diversification. A multicloud strategy alone does not guarantee independence.

“The issue is not that companies use multiple providers, but that they lack a proven ability to move business logic between environments without major impact on operations, cost, or speed,” adds Horný.

The survey confirms that most CFOs acknowledge they do not have a tested exit or migration strategy. Without this, the ability to switch remains theoretical.

True technological sovereignty is not about leaving the cloud. It is about architecture that separates business logic from infrastructure. This is where a platform layer based on containerization and cloud-native principles becomes critical. Only then can companies achieve real portability, alternative scenarios, and measurable readiness for change.

According to Horný, technological sovereignty is not just about regulation or risk mitigation. It is increasingly a matter of economic strength. The ability to maintain real optionality, be prepared for exit, and avoid dependency on a single vendor translates into stronger negotiating power, greater flexibility, and healthier cost structures. Companies that are not technologically “locked in” are less exposed to pricing pressure and have greater freedom to act based on their own strategy.

Companies that understand this early will not necessarily be the most technologically advanced. But in a world where geopolitics influences cloud contracts, regulations reshape access to data, and hyperscalers adjust pricing under the assumption that leaving is too costly — the ability to choose may be the most valuable technological capability a company can have.