Manifesto
Three pillars
Measure before claiming
The sovereign cloud market piles up self-awarded labels and sponsored rankings. NextHop makes the opposite choice: a public reference framework, quantified scoring, verifiable sources. The strength of a claim is measured by the quality of its sources, not by the fame of who utters it. Our scores can be challenged, our scales audited, our figures recomputed. This is the condition for sovereignty to become a serious object of public and private decision.
Distinguish legal from technical sovereignty
Hosting in France does not mean extraterritorial immunity. Proprietary source code does not mean absence of portability. French capital does not guarantee technological autonomy. NextHop documents the levels separately: data location, legal status of the host, contractual immunity, technical stack independence, operational reversibility. This decomposition avoids the conflations that mask real dependencies and prevent informed decisions.
Provide tools rather than prescriptions
Our role is not to dictate the right choice. It is to provide the tools so that an organisation can make its own: public reference framework, price comparator, open API, freely reusable datasets, documented methodology. A public buyer, a CISO, a journalist, a researcher must be able to verify our figures, redo our calculations and build their own analyses. The transparency of the tools prevails over the authority of recommendations.
Commitments
Four verifiable commitments
A vision is only worth what it materialises into measurable acts. Here are the four commitments that translate the pillars above.
Open source code
The platform code is published as components stabilise. Enables verification and reuse.
See the codeOpen data (CC BY-SA)
Raw datasets (providers, datacenters, scores) are made available under Creative Commons attribution share-alike.
Access the datasetsPublic methodology
Documented scoring framework, detailed scales, cited sources, open contestation procedure. No hidden weighting.
Read the methodologyFinancial independence
No commercial relationship with the scored cloud providers. Economic model based on consulting missions and API subscriptions.
Independence charter (in French)Statement
This manifesto binds NextHop across all its publications, tools and missions. Any observed deviation may be reported to contact@nexthop.fr and will be answered with a public, reasoned response.