ArmorText, an organization dedicated to safeguarding communication globally for organizations, has debuted ArmorText Sovereign Edition.
ArmorText Sovereign Edition built to support collaboration as geopolitical security risks rise
This new solution enables deployment of globally reachable, multi-tenant secure communications hosted entirely on local infrastructure to ensure communication continuity even when connectivity is disrupted.
The Edition addresses the need for secure, compliant collaboration that continues to function when geopolitical events threaten connectivity to global infrastructure.
Deployments operate on local infrastructure through trusted partners
Sovereign Edition deployments operate independently on local infrastructure with trusted anchor customers, data center providers, and regional partners to enable communications to continue.
“Older regulations set standard definitions around ‘data sovereignty’ but as Microsoft has confirmed in recent testimony to French authorities, those standards don’t protect your data from extraterritorial legal actions,” said Matt Calligan, Director of Growth Markets, ArmorText.
“Even without that data risk, simply relying on foreign infrastructure exposes you to one-sided kill-switches that can instantly shut you out. This has prompted the ICC to cut ties with Microsoft, joining a growing list of European governments who have abandoned Microsoft for options that give them full control over their infrastructure. With NIS2 and DORA setting new standards for operational resilience in Europe, organizations need a communications infrastructure that meets both security and sovereignty. Sovereign Edition is built from the ground up to address these needs,” Calligan continued.
The ArmorText Sovereign Edition was initially available in Iceland through Origo. The company now plans to expand into additional regions through channel partners.
Q&A with ArmorText CEO Navroop Mitter
In the wake of the announcement, Channel Insider asked ArmorText CEO Navroop Mitter about the latest development and how channel partners will scale the offering worldwide.
What market gap did ArmorText identify that led to the creation of Sovereign Edition?
Stable geopolitical norms that underpinned global SaaS delivery for decades no longer hold true – threats of undersea cable sabotage, overnight sanctions, and politicization of service access have entities around the world saying “We need you here – not there.”
For critical infrastructure like financial services, energy, government, law enforcement, and communications failures during crises aren’t just inconvenient, they are catastrophic.
Multi-region SaaS architectures aren’t designed to connect for that. AWS, Azure, and Salesforce, for example, do not and will not have data centers and localized delivery models in every country in the world.
These architectures still create single points of failure: centralized control planes, kill switches, and external dependencies can be disrupted by geopolitical decisions. Put simply, having servers in a region doesn’t protect you when the vendor’s control plane or phone-home requirements are outside your jurisdiction.
Not every organization has the capital or bandwidth required to set up and self-host their own highly available secure communications solution for both day-to-day Incident Response, SecOps, and Threat sharing, and especially not one also capable of being operated and maintained in a highly disconnected state arising from geopolitical risks.
What’s needed is a shared infrastructure model that still provides independence.
At the same time, regulators are rightfully asking for increased executive and board-level emphasis on cyber and operational resilience, none of which can occur without comms when you need them most.
We team up with channel partners in each geography, creating significant opportunity.
Why are traditional multi-region SaaS architectures no longer sufficient for operational resilience?
Multi-region SaaS architectures aren’t designed for service delivery when countries cannot reach applications in ‘friendly’ regions where AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud reside, whether nearby or not.
IaaS providers atop whose infrastructure SaaS providers deploy their applications are not in every country in the world.
Even when they’re nearby, traffic may still need to route through centralized control planes, SaaS apps may still need to “phone-home” to another, now unavailable, region to remain operational, or be subject to kill switches – sanctions, compiled legal action, or political pressure – in a geography other than yours.
What does “globally reachable, multi-tenant, but locally hosted” mean in practical deployment terms?
Each Sovereign Edition deployment is built on a three-legged stool: local data center partnership, regional Reseller/MSP partner, and anchor customers.
This is not just a data center co-location play – partners can operate and manage the deployment locally, as needed, including scaling licenses through our Reserve Capacity offering during crises. They’re building a defensible, differentiated position in their geography.
Each Sovereign Edition is a distinct, independent deployment within a host geography – no external dependencies that can be weaponized against local operations.
Within their chosen Sovereign Edition, customers establish a ‘Private Directory’ or tenant, where logical isolation is enforced by end-to-end encrypted (E2EE) (not just permissions) while benefiting from professionally-managed shared infrastructure.
But Sovereign Editions are not islands unto themselves – remote and traveling personnel can still access the platform. When connectivity is restored after degradation, collaboration beyond borders resumes seamlessly.
In all cases, these deployments benefit from all of the same features and capabilities of our core ArmorText offering – E2EE messaging, file sharing, voice and video, as well as E2EE governance, including the ability for MNCs to maintain E2EE jurisdictions-specific retention and review within a single tenant – no need for sign up separate instances for each regulatory requirement.
Sovereign Edition customers maintain the ability to set up Trust Relationships between private directories, enabling secure cross-organization collaboration for those on the same infrastructure or deployment.
How does Sovereign Edition protect organizations from kill-switch risks and extraterritorial legal actions?
This comes down to people and processes, legal safeguards, and technology. There are no external control plane dependencies. There are no phone-home requirements. Local operators are trained on how to manage and maintain the system day-to-day and how to identify early warning signs that may require escalation or dual-control mitigations.
Legal mechanisms, including how and when local operators can/would take full control of the system, are structured into each deployment as appropriate, with SLA patterns and remedies for sovereignty scenarios, not just uptime.
Finally, end-to-end encryption for communications and review is client-controlled, with keys necessary for decryption never being transmitted to/through ArmorText, its suppliers, vendors, or partners.
How does ArmorText support partners with enablement, support, and go-to-market collaboration?
Partners aren’t just reselling our SaaS; they’re establishing sovereign deployments in their geography – a differentiated, defensible market position.
We support them through joint go-to-market with thought leadership positioning, co-hosting executive forums (Chatham House rules), co-authored frameworks, case studies, translation of key presentations, compliance mapping, vertical-specific positioning, and technical enablement of the people/technical/legal framework.
Where partners possess systems integration capabilities, our Secure Gateway offering presents a tremendous opportunity for advisory followed by systems integration work to help define, design, and implement E2EE integrations and feeds for customers.
Finally, the sovereignty design checklist and decision matrix we work through with partners becomes portable expertise. They can apply this approach to other offerings in their portfolio – something increasingly called for given current geopolitical shifts.
How does the Origo partnership in Iceland serve as a blueprint for other markets?
Deploying our Sovereign Edition in Iceland was demand-led – initiated by Icelandic financial sector leaders concerned about resilience in light of geopolitical risk. The structure is a three-party model; anchor customer, local IT data center/managed services partner, and ArmorText as a platform provider.
Origo now has a differentiated offering that no competitor in their market can match, with validation from an anchor customer opening doors across financial services, energy, and government.
Iceland’s threat profile (undersea cable vulnerability, volcanic eruptions, geographic isolation, and satellite data bandwidth concerns) was a forcing function – but the model applies wherever geopolitical risk exists. Architecture choices, governance decisions, legal structuring – these are now documented and transferable.
The deployment also demonstrates how a Sovereign Edition serves MNCs based in that jurisdiction, enabling them to meet data sovereignty obligations across multiple jurisdictions from a single tenant.
What should potential partners or customers expect as ArmorText expands Sovereign Edition globally?
We’re looking for anchor customers and partners who want to establish Sovereign Editions in their geography – not just deploying opportunistically. In each case, we’ll be working with a local infrastructure partner, anchor customer(s), and drive regional go-to-market collaboration.
This is a deliberate rollout, not a land-grab – quality of partnership over speed of expansion. We’ll be prioritizing opportunities by geopolitical risk profile, regulatory environment, strong anchor customer candidate, and especially those geographies where a capable local partner proactively comes to the table with an anchor customer relationship already in development.
