This interview is with Juan Aguirre, Chief Commercial Officer, Ilkari.
For Connectively’s readers, how do you describe your role as Chief Commercial Officer in computer hardware and the lens it gives you on data sovereignty, sovereign cloud, certified data centres, domain registration, and cloud solutions?
As Chief Commercial Officer, my role is not simply to sell technology. It is to help our customers achieve their business objectives and be successful. The starting point is always understanding their business, the challenges they are trying to solve, and the opportunities they are looking to capture. Only then does technology come into play.
Today, conversations that used to revolve around cost, performance, and speed to deploy almost always include questions about control, predictability and resilience. Whether we are talking about certified data centres, domain services or sovereign cloud infrastructure, they all come back to one fundamental business question: What degree of control do I have over my critical digital assets—and if it is not me, who does?
That is the lens I bring. I spend a great deal of time listening to customers across regulated industries and international organisations. What we are seeing is a clear shift. Businesses no longer assume that bigger automatically means safer. They are looking for partners who can combine enterprise-grade infrastructure with transparency, local accountability and flexibility.
At Ilkari, sovereignty is not a standalone product. It is a design principle that runs across everything we deliver, giving organisations greater certainty over where their data lives, who manages it and how it supports their long-term business goals.
Which pivotal decisions and experiences took you from telecom/IPTV/VOD into a sovereignty-focused CCO role, and how did that shape your commercial playbook?
Across telecoms, IPTV, and enterprise networking, the technology changed dramatically over the years, but one thing remained remarkably consistent: customers invest in business outcomes, not infrastructure. Increasingly, theyre also investing in predictability. As organisations scale, they need confidence that their technology won’t become a source of uncertainty, whether that’s around performance, compliance, cost, or operational control.
Working with service providers, hospitality groups, and multinational enterprises taught me that the best commercial conversations happen when you understand the customers’ business before discussing technology.
The move into sovereignty felt like a natural progression because the market itself has changed. Digital infrastructure is no longer just an IT conversation; it has become a board-level business issue involving risk, regulation, resilience, and competitive advantage.
That has shaped how I approach commercial strategy today. Rather than leading with features, we start with business priorities. What is the business trying to achieve? What regulations are changing? Where is the organisation expanding? What risks are keeping leadership awake at night? Only once we understand those objectives do we discuss how technology can help them get there.
From your recent enterprise work, what is the earliest, most reliable signal you advise teams to instrument to detect when storage location and operational control have diverged?
The earliest warning sign isn’t usually technical; it’s organisational. When different teams give different answers to simple questions like “Where is this data actually processed?” or “Who has administrative control?”, you’ve already uncovered a governance gap.
Many organisations assume that because data resides in a particular geography, they automatically retain operational control. Those are two very different things.
We encourage customers to map ownership as carefully as they map infrastructure. Who controls the encryption keys? Who has the technical expertise to operate and support the environment? Who approves privileged access? Which legal jurisdiction governs operational decisions? Those questions often reveal risks long before they become compliance issues.
Good visibility isn’t just about monitoring infrastructure. It’s about understanding who is accountable, who is in control, and who has the capability to act across the entire service lifecycle.
From a product and sales standpoint, which specific certifications should regulated B2B buyers prioritize when selecting a sovereign cloud or certified data centre?
Certifications are key, but only if buyers understand what they actually demonstrate.
Standards such as ISO 27001 remain fundamental because they demonstrate mature information security management. Depending on the sector, certifications covering business continuity, environmental management, or operational resilience may also be important.
For data centres, independently audited certifications provide confidence that the facility is operated according to recognised international standards. More importantly, they show that resilience, security, and operational excellence are achieved by design, not by luck.
However, I always encourage customers not to stop at the certificate itself. Ask how those standards are implemented day-to-day. Ask about governance, operational processes, and accountability. A certificate demonstrates that an organisation has been independently assessed against a recognised standard, but it’s the discipline with which those standards are maintained and embedded into daily operations that ultimately shapes the customer experience.
Given your international sales background, how do you structure a single commercial offer that still respects country-by-country data residency and processing rules?
The key is standardisation, where customers benefit from consistency, combined with flexibility where regulations or business requirements demand it.
Large organisations don’t want to negotiate an entirely different commercial relationship every time they enter a new market. They want a consistent experience.
At the same time, every country has different expectations around data residency, privacy, and operational control.
Our approach is to build modular solutions. Customers receive a consistent commercial framework, while infrastructure deployment, hosting location, and governance can adapt to local regulatory requirements.
Equally important is being pragmatic. Not every workload requires the same level of sovereignty or control. The conversation should focus on identifying the applications, data, and services that are truly business-critical, then ensuring customers retain the appropriate level of control over those assets while maintaining the flexibility to innovate elsewhere.
That allows organisations to scale internationally without creating unnecessary complexity, over-engineering every deployment, or compromising compliance.
Based on your DNS and outage-prevention experience, what governance model do you recommend for domain registration and DNSSEC to reduce sovereignty risk and avoid hard-to-diagnose failures?
Domains are often underestimated until something goes wrong. In reality, they’re your digital real estate—your organisation’s front door to the online world.
From a commercial perspective, losing control of a domain can mean lost revenue, damaged customer trust, and operational disruption that extends far beyond the IT department.
Organisations that manage this well treat domains as critical business assets, not administrative tasks.
That means clear ownership, documented governance, centralised visibility across domain portfolios, strong access controls, and technologies such as DNSSEC to strengthen integrity. It also means actively protecting your digital identity against risks like domain squatting, impersonation, and fraudulent registrations that can undermine both brand reputation and customer confidence.
Perhaps most importantly, domain management should sit within a broader resilience and security strategy rather than exist in isolation. If domains are your digital real estate, they need to be protected with the same discipline as any other business-critical asset. Customers increasingly recognise that digital identity deserves the same level of governance as the infrastructure supporting it.
When moving sensitive or AI workloads from a hyperscaler to a sovereign cloud, what migration pattern has most reliably de-risked the first 90 days for your customers?
The most successful migrations are rarely the fastest ones.
Customers achieve better outcomes when they adopt a phased approach rather than attempting a complete transition overnight. In many cases, we also recommend starting with greenfield projects. They give organisations the opportunity to gain experience with an alternative platform, establish operational confidence, and build internal expertise before migrating business-critical or sensitive workloads.
Once that foundation is in place, we generally recommend moving workloads where sovereignty, compliance, or operational control delivers the clearest business value. That allows organisations to establish governance, validate performance, and refine operational processes before expanding further.
Equally important is involving both technical and business stakeholders from day one. Successful migrations aren’t infrastructure projects; they’re business transformation initiatives. Keeping those groups aligned significantly reduces risk during the first 90 days and lays the groundwork for long-term success.
As a CCO, how do you price and package sovereign inference and compliant compute so that spend maps to business outcomes rather than raw consumption metrics?
Customers do not measure success in CPU hours or virtual machines; they measure success through business outcomes.
That is why commercial models need to move beyond pure infrastructure consumption.
Our conversations increasingly focus on predictability, compliance, resilience, and operational confidence. These are tangible business benefits that reduce risk and help organisations plan with greater certainty.
A good commercial model aligns technology investment with the outcomes customers actually value, whether that is meeting regulatory obligations, accelerating deployment, improving resilience, or enabling secure AI adoption.
Ultimately, infrastructure should become an enabler of business performance, not an unpredictable operating cost.
Drawing on your M&A and strategic partnerships work, what signals tell you a prospective partner or acquisition will strengthen a sovereignty roadmap technically and commercially without disrupting the sales motion?
Technology compatibility matters, but culture and customer alignment matter even more.
The strongest partnerships aren’t simply about expanding product portfolios; they’re about creating a better customer experience.
When evaluating partners or acquisitions, I look at three things.
- Do they solve a genuine customer problem that complements what we already offer?
- Do they share our approach to customer relationships, transparency, and long-term value?
- Can we integrate the solution without making life more complicated for customers or our sales teams?
If the partnership creates confusion, increases friction, or weakens customer trust, it isn’t creating value regardless of how attractive the technology may be.
Thanks for sharing your knowledge and expertise. Is there anything else you'd like to add?
One thing I’d encourage organisations to rethink is the assumption that sovereignty is simply about compliance. Compliance is important, but it’s only part of the picture.
What we’re seeing is that organisations investing in sovereign infrastructure are also becoming more resilient, more agile, and better prepared for future regulatory and technological change.
The businesses that gain the greatest advantage are the ones asking strategic questions today rather than reacting when new requirements arrive.
Technology continues to evolve rapidly, especially with AI accelerating change across every industry. In that environment, having confidence in where your digital assets reside, who controls them, and how they’re governed is becoming a competitive differentiator, not just a compliance exercise.
That’s the conversation we enjoy having with customers, because it’s no longer about infrastructure alone. It’s about giving organisations the confidence to innovate without compromising control.