Key Insights from CMS Experts Utrecht: AI, cloud sovereignty, and the future of digital experience

By Roel Kuik, 12-02-2026

On a crisp winter day in Utrecht, digital leaders gathered for the CMS Experts meetup hosted by Janus Boye. The historic venue set the stage for forward-thinking discussions about the challenges and opportunities reshaping how we build, manage, and deliver digital experiences.

Three critical themes emerged from the day's conversations:

1. The transformative impact of AI on B2B buyer journeys.

2. The complex landscape of AI governance and compliance.

3. The growing movement toward European cloud sovereignty.

Here's what we learned.

AI is fundamentally changing B2B buyer journeys

The first session tackled a question keeping many marketers up at night: "How is AI reshaping the way B2B buyers research and make decisions?"

The shift is profound. Today's buyers increasingly turn to ChatGPT, Copilot, and other AI tools for their initial research, bypassing traditional search engines and company websites. This creates both a challenge and an opportunity for digital teams.

The localisation imperative

One of the most striking insights was about content localisation. It's no longer enough to translate content; teams need to understand how buyer intent and search phrasing differ across markets. The recommendation: investigate actual buyer search prompts in different markets and develop localisation strategies that reflect these differences.

Content audits are more critical than ever

With AI tools pulling from multiple sources to answer queries, organisations need comprehensive content audits to identify gaps and ensure their information is discoverable and authoritative. Review platforms like G2 are becoming increasingly important for SEO, as AI tools often reference these sources when making recommendations.

Beyond traditional channels

The group discussed expanding beyond company websites to social platforms like Reddit and LinkedIn, where authentic conversations happen. The key is understanding which channels AI tools actually reference for your industry and ensuring your presence there is strong.

A critical caution emerged: thorough market research must come before AI implementation. AI can accelerate execution, but it cannot replace the fundamental work of understanding your market, customers, and product-market fit.

AI Governance: From excitement to implementation

The second session, led by BloomReach, dove into the practical realities of implementing AI in content management systems while maintaining compliance and trust.

BloomReach has integrated AI capabilities under their 'Lumi AI' umbrella, including a content assistant within their CMS for generation and enrichment tasks like metadata and SEO optimisation. But the real discussion centred on governance.

The compliance challenge

Organisations, particularly in regulated industries like banking and healthcare, are creating internal AI gateways and security platforms to manage data privacy. They need granual workflow controls, human-in-the-loop solutions, and comprehensive audit trails for AI interactions.

Building trust incrementally

A key insight: start with simple, specific AI use cases to build trust within teams. The emotional impact of AI on existing roles cannot be ignored. Developers and content creators who have spent years mastering their craft may feel threatened by tools that seem to devalue their expertise.

The recommendation is to frame AI as augmentation rather than replacement, showing clear value and ROI while supporting people through the transition. This means choosing confined, well-defined tasks where AI performs reliably rather than attempting broad, complex implementation that frustrate users and deliver inconsistent results.

The competitive pressure

There's real concern about competitors leveraging AI to rebuild applications faster and cheaper. The response cannot be panic; it requires maintaining strong client relationships, understanding market trends, and thoughtfully adapting business models to include more professional services and consultancy alongside software.

Cloud sovereignty: Europe's strategic response

The final session tackled a topic gaining momentum: the shift toward European cloud infrastructure as an alternative to AWS and other US-based providers.

The catalyst was simple economics. One company managing 2,000 websites questioned their AWS consumption and discovered significant cost savings were possible with European alternatives. They chose InfoSupport, a Dutch vendor offering a European federated cloud solution.

The sovereignty advantage

Beyond cost, European cloud provides offer strategic benefits. Government rules in some markets require local or European hosting for government websites, creating a competitive advantage. There's also growing recognition of the economic and control benefits of keeping data within Europe, despite political framing around independence from US tech giants.

Implementation realities

The transition isn't without challenges. Services like application filters and protection shields need reconfiguration for new cloud environments. Organisations with global operations must balance European hosting requirements with the needs of customers in other regions. 

There's also the question of whether 'sovereignty' will become the next compliance buzzword, similar to how GDPR transformed data privacy. Banks and heavily regulated industries may eventually make sovereignty a hard requirement, driving broader adoption.

Accessibility rising

An interesting parallel emerged: post-European Accessibility Act, there's growing interest in accessibility similar to what happened after GDPR. This suggests that regulatory drivers can create lasting change in how digital experiences are built.

AI-powered content management in practice

The day concluded with a live demonstration of AI integrated into content management workflows. The demo showed AI extracting summaries from PDFs, reviewing content for compliance, and automating tasks like social media post creation and metadata generation.

The key insight: AI works best when integrated into specific workflow steps with clear success criteria. Using multiple AI models for different tasks (one for reading PDFs, another for analysing content) produces better results than trying to use a single model for everything 

What this means for digital teams

Several actionable takeaways emerged from the day:

• Investigate how AI tools actually research your product category across different markets. Don't assume; test and document the prompts and sources being used.

• Audit your content comprehensively. Identify gaps, strengthen authoritative sources, and ensure discoverability across the platforms AI tools reference.

• Start AI implementation with simple, specific use cases. Build trust and demonstrate value before attempting complex, broad deployment.

• Consider European cloud alternatives seriously, especially if you serve government clients or operate in regulated industries. The economics are increasingly favourable. 

• Invest in AI governance frameworks from the start. Auditability, human oversight, and compliance will only become more important.

• Support your team through AI transformation. The emotional and practical challenges are real and require thoughtful change management.

Looking ahead

The conversations in Utrecht revealed an industry at an inflection point. AI is no longer a future consideration; it's actively reshaping how buyers research, how content is created and managed, and how digital experiences are delivered.

At the same time, there's growing recognition that sovereignty, governance, and human expertise remain critical. The organisations that will thrive are those that thoughtfully integrate AI capabilities while maintaining strong foundations in strategy, compliance, and customer understanding.

The CMS Expertise community continues to provide a valuable forum for sharing these insights and navigating these changes together. If you're grappling with these challenges, you're not alone, and there's tremendous value in learning from peers who are working through the same questions.

About the CMS Experts meetup: CMS Experts is a community hosted by Janus Boye bringing together digital leaders to share insights and experiences about content management, digital experiences platforms, and the evolving digital landscape.