Data residency
Also known as: data location · data sovereignty
Data residency is the requirement that data be processed and stored in specific geographic or legal jurisdictions.
- Healthcare, finance, and public sectors often have hard residency rules.
- It shapes cloud choice: you may only use providers with regions in your jurisdiction.
- A strong argument for local or on-prem AI when residency is strict.
The strategic point: data residency is one of the few requirements that can *rule out* cloud AI entirely. If your data must never leave a jurisdiction, local inference isn't a convenience — it's a compliance requirement.