As a CTO, your job isn't just to "make sure the site is up." Your job is to Manage Risk.
And the biggest risk in the modern enterprise isn't a hacker or a bug; it’s Dependency.
If your company relies on proprietary "Black Box" services for its core operations, you aren't an officer; you’re an administrator of someone else’s assets. At Leapjuice, we call this the "Sovereignty Gap."
To help you bridge that gap, we’ve developed the Sovereignty Score. Use this 10-point checklist to see if you actually own your infrastructure, or if it’s just renting you.
The Sovereignty Checklist
1. The "Export" Test Can you export your entire user database, including state and metadata, in a standard format (SQL, JSON) without needing a support ticket? (Score: 1 point)
2. The "Off-Switch" Test If your primary cloud provider deleted your account today, could you be back online with a different provider within 24 hours using your existing backups? (Score: 1 point)
3. The "Moat" Test Is your "Secret Sauce"—your business logic, your workflows, your proprietary algorithms—stored in a self-hosted environment (like n8n or OpenWebUI) or is it locked in a third-party SaaS? (Score: 1 point)
4. The "Model" Test Can you swap your LLM provider (from OpenAI to Anthropic or a local Llama 3) by changing a single environment variable, without breaking your UI or your history? (Score: 1 point)
5. The "Privacy" Test Does your internal company data (employee chats, strategy docs) reside on infrastructure that you control the encryption keys for? (Score: 1 point)
6. The "Anycast" Test Do you own your global IP space (or use a provider that gives you dedicated Anycast IPs), or are you behind a shared CDN that can "De-platform" you? (Score: 1 point)
7. The "Audit" Test Can you view the raw logs of every request, every API call, and every database query in real-time, without paying for a "Premium Logging" tier? (Score: 1 point)
8. The "Vendor" Test Have you avoided "Proprietary APIs" (like AWS Lambda, DynamoDB, or Google Firebase) in favor of Open Source standards (Docker, Postgres, Redis)? (Score: 1 point)
9. The "IOPS" Test Do you have access to raw, unthrottled storage performance (NVMe), or are you paying a "Tax" for provisioned IOPS on a networked disk? (Score: 1 point)
10. The "AI" Test Are your AI-driven workflows running on hardware you "own" (Bare Metal), or are you subject to the "Variable Latency" and "Rate Limits" of the public cloud? (Score: 1 point)
Your Results
- 0-3 Points: The Serf. You are completely dependent on the big cloud giants. You have zero leverage and infinite risk.
- 4-7 Points: The Tenant. You have some control, but you’re still paying a massive "Complexity Tax." One bad policy change from a vendor could cripple you.
- 8-10 Points: The Sovereign. You are a master of your own destiny. You use the cloud as a utility, not a cage. Your infrastructure is a competitive advantage, not a liability.
Why Sovereignty is a Board-Level Issue
Digital Sovereignty is not a "Tech Detail." It is the foundation of Business Continuity.
If you don't own your tools, you don't own your future. Leapjuice was built to give every CTO the tools they need to achieve a perfect 10/10 Sovereignty Score.
How does your company score today?
The era of dependency is over. The era of the Sovereign CTO has begun.
Technical Specs
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