This talk highlights the significance of sovereign IT infrastructure through the lens of a long-standing, research-driven initiative at the Campus Lingen of Osnabrück University of Applied Sciences. Since 2015, a private cloud environment actually based on OpenStack, Kubernetes, and Ceph has been operated on-site, providing researchers with full control over their data, computing resources, and software stack. Since 2023, this infrastructure has been further enhanced through integration with a private 5G Campus Network, enabling low-latency, high-bandwidth, and secure connectivity for cutting-edge research in areas such as Industry 4.0, logistics, and edge computing.
The combination of open-source technologies and sovereign control ensures transparency, reproducibility, and compliance with data protection regulations—key pillars of trustworthy research. By maintaining full ownership and governance over its digital infrastructure, the university fosters innovation, supports interdisciplinary collaboration, and serves as a model for sustainable, researcher-centric digital ecosystems. This case study demonstrates and will name some examples from real research projects like 5G Campusnet, TiDa5G, ReSiSTAR and others, that sovereign infrastructure in the sense of Sovereign Cloud Stack is not merely a technical choice but a strategic enabler of academic independence, data integrity, and future-proof research in an increasingly interconnected and regulated world.