In a world where technology evolves at an unprecedented pace, businesses face the challenge of maintaining control, transparency, and efficiency in their digital infrastructure. At nowtec solutions, we’ve taken significant strides toward achieving digital sovereignty – a concept that emphasizes independence from third-party providers and greater control over our technological stack. This blog explores the journey we undertook to transform our setup and highlights why this shift is critical for modern enterprises.
Why Digital Sovereignty Matters
The global tech landscape is dominated by a few major players – AWS, Google Cloud, and other big tech providers. While these platforms offer robust services, they also come with inherent risks:
- Political Dependencies: Many cloud services are managed by entities that are subject to geopolitical influences. This can lead to sudden changes in service availability or terms.
- Transparency Issues: Despite claims of openness, understanding where data is stored and how it’s managed often lacks clarity.
- Vendor Lock-In: Relying heavily on third-party providers often results in limited flexibility and high costs when scaling or adapting to new requirements.
For nowtec solutions, these challenges underscored the need to rethink our infrastructure. We aimed to minimize dependencies on external vendors while ensuring scalability, cost-efficiency, and control.
The Transformation: Key Changes in Our Tech Stack
Our journey toward digital sovereignty involved several strategic changes:
- Cloud Independence:
- We transitioned from AWS to OpenStack, hosted by Infomaniac. Known as the “ethical cloud“, Infomaniac offers transparent pricing and adheres to open standards like OpenStack, ensuring greater control over our cloud environment.
- Custom Authentication:
- Instead of relying on services like Auth0, we developed an authentication mechanism using Strapi’s authentication capabilities, NextAuth and ShadCN UI. This approach provides scalability while reducing costs and dependency on external updates.
- Flexible UI Frameworks:
- We replaced Ant Design with ShadCN components. Unlike opinionated frameworks, ShadCN allows us to download and customize components, giving us full control over our UI design.
- Dedicated Services Over Workflows:
- Rather than hosting workflows on platforms like n8n, we built dedicated services using FastAPI. This shift ensures better performance and maintainability for critical processes.
- AI Integration at Scale:
- While low-code/no-code tools are excellent for prototyping, they often fall short for large-scale deployments. By switching from ChatGPT to OLLAMA for AI integrations, we achieved better scalability and tailored solutions that align with our needs.
Lessons Learned Along the Way
Our transition wasn’t without challenges. Here are some key insights:
- Prototyping vs. Production: Low-code/no-code tools are invaluable for rapid prototyping but often lack the robustness required for production-level tasks.
- Cost Transparency: Many third-party services have complex billing models that can inflate costs unexpectedly. Building custom solutions offers more predictable expenses.
- Flexibility and Control: Creating standalone services may require more initial effort but pays off in long-term maintainability and adaptability.
The Future of Digital Sovereignty
As regulations around technology evolve globally, businesses must stay ahead of the curve by adopting practices that prioritize independence and transparency. At nowtec solutions, our focus remains on delivering high-quality services while maintaining control over our infrastructure – a balance that benefits both us and our customers.
Watch Our Journey
To dive deeper into how we achieved digital sovereignty and the specific steps we took to update our tech stack, watch this insightful video featuring Vladimir, the CTO of nowtec solutions:
This video provides a behind-the-scenes look at our decision-making process and the tangible benefits we’ve experienced since making these changes.
The Road Ahead
Digital sovereignty is not a one-time project, it’s an ongoing commitment. At nowtec solutions, we continue to refine our infrastructure, explore new technologies, and prioritize transparency in everything we do. By embracing independence, we’re not only safeguarding our operations but also empowering our clients with reliable and innovative solutions.
If your organization is ready to take control of its digital future, nowtec solutions can help you navigate this transformative journey. Contact us today.
