Across Germany, the DACH region, and Europe, defence has become a credible growth path for mid-market firms if their digital and IT foundations can keep pace. EU Member states spent €326 billion on defence in 2024, with over €100 billion in additional investment expected by 2027 (Source: Council of the EU and the European Council). This surge fuels demand for resilient, sovereign, and secure IT that scales under disruption and enables trusted data handling across multi-tier ecosystems.
Entry barriers – classification, eligibility, and procurement hurdles
Defence programmes operate at mission speed and increasingly rely on software-defined architectures and AI (Source). Yet many mid-market IT organisations lack the readiness: legacy stacks, fragmented processes, and limited defence literacy constrain collaboration and scaling. The leaders in this field professionalise “Defence IT,” modernise foundations, and build digital platforms that enable secure cross-company collaboration while maintaining agility and innovation.
Immediate CIO focus should be to assess the current IT landscape against defence-grade requirements – sovereignty, resilience, compliance – and to launch a modernisation roadmap embedding secure-by-design architecture and DevSecOps as core delivery principles. Over time, CIOs should evolve towards integrated, defence-ready platforms that can operate securely across supply chains and programme partners.
Defence information in Europe typically starts at “Restricted” in Germany, (‘VS-NfD’) triggering strict obligations: verified staff eligibility, documented training, and sometimes nationality constraints under NATO or similar frameworks. Most companies must operate dual IT environments: a conventional enterprise and a dedicated defence enclave. This separation increases complexity, cost, and limits technology choices to sovereign or on-premises solutions.
Procurement adds further hurdles: export control, supplier certification, onboarding for classified data handling, and business continuity and reporting obligations under NIS2. Integration with authorities and primes must follow auditable, prescribed steps. While demanding, these controls form a blueprint for building credible and compliant capability.
Acting early by identifying roles that require clearance and initiating staff eligibility and training programmes is crucial for securing relevant market share. Mid-term, organisations need to establish a dedicated, compliant defence enclave with appropriate infrastructure and security governance, integrating it gradually with enterprise IT under controlled interfaces.
Core capabilities of a defence-grade IT environment
A defence-grade IT environment is sovereign, resilient, and security-hardened by design. Segmentation, DMZs, and strict identity management enforce “need-to-know” access. Centralised classification and encryption ensure consistent data protection and sovereignty across systems. Zero Trust principles, end-to-end encryption, AI-assisted threat detection, and continuous monitoring through a security operations centre form the security backbone (Source).
Resilience is engineered into every layer: redundancy across critical components, strengthened physical security, and well-tested business continuity. Defence-grade DevSecOps uses containerisation, CI/CD, and infrastructure-as-code through audited, restricted pipelines. The enterprise backbone connects contract management, secure supply chain, lifecycle management, and developer portals through trusted enterprise services.
CIOs should prioritise the establishment of a security baseline – Zero Trust, encryption, and monitoring – and progressively deploy a defence-grade DevSecOps toolchain to enable faster, auditable software delivery in restricted environments. In the long run, the focus shifts to building a fully integrated backbone ensuring data quality, lineage, and interoperability across defence and enterprise ecosystems.
Building trust and credibility – certifications and partnerships
Trust in defence is built through transparency and consistent delivery. Certifications, audits, encryption by default, and least-privilege access are no longer differentiators but expected hygiene. Clear governance that separates defence from conventional IT, supported by close collaboration with the CISO, reinforces accountability.
Upskilling is essential: teams must understand defence-grade standards and operating models, with eligibility and nationality requirements defined early. Partnerships accelerate progress, particularly in sovereign cloud and platform development, but require rigorous partner governance and verified supply chains. Well-scoped pilots validate secure design, compliance, and environment separation before scaling.
Organisations, driven by the CIO, should focus on achieving essential certifications for the desired business outcome (e.g., ISO 27001, NIS2 readiness, VS-NfD compliance) and building internal competence through targeted upskilling. Mid-term, they should formalise partner governance and integrate supply chain assurance to strengthen credibility with primes and authorities.
Go-to-market strategies – positioning, messaging, and procurement alignment
Winning in defence IT requires aligning capability to mission outcomes and procurement logic. For incumbents, the narrative is to prepare their organisation for the rapidly increasing market demand by increasing production capacities tightly coupled to a modernised, sovereign, and resilient backbone ready to scale. For new entrants, our blueprints for a defence-ready IT landscape show how to stand up compliant, interoperable environments quickly.
Positioning should emphasise resilience, speed, and compliance. Procurement alignment must be demonstrable: restricted-data handling readiness, export control compliance, supplier certification, and auditable DevSecOps pipelines. Controlled openness via partner APIs, curated marketplaces, and collaborative workbenches under strict governance will define the next generation of trusted ecosystems.
CIOs need to align IT delivery with procurement standards and defence contracting processes and develop reusable compliance assets and secure integration patterns to demonstrate readiness and speed in future bids.
Turning compliance into competitive advantage
When compliance becomes operational discipline, CIOs and CTOs transform obligations into differentiation: Zero Trust, audited DevSecOps, sovereign cloud, and business continuity by design. Those who professionalise Defence IT, modernise foundations, and build trusted collaboration platforms will move at mission speed with confidence.
The reward is durable growth based on resilience, sovereignty, and credibility and operational edge in one of Europe’s most demanding and fastest-growing technology ecosystems.
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