{"id":339956,"date":"2022-07-13T09:58:51","date_gmt":"2022-07-13T07:58:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.optimal-systems.de\/?p=339956"},"modified":"2024-05-23T13:39:09","modified_gmt":"2024-05-23T11:39:09","slug":"gaia-x-europes-fight-for-digital-sovereignty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.optimal-systems.de\/en\/digitalization\/blog\/gaia-x-europes-fight-for-digital-sovereignty","title":{"rendered":"Gaia-X: Europe's fight for digital sovereignty"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Gaia-X: Europe's fight for digital sovereignty<\/h1>\n\n\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n
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Organizations of all sizes are working to modernize their IT infrastructure to remain competitive. They know: nothing works without the cloud. The cloud computing market in Europe is expected to grow from its current value of 63 billion euros in 2021 to 560 billion euros by 2023<\/a>.
The majority of businesses rely on one of the big three \u2013 Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud. These global players control 66 percent of the European market \u2013 while the market share of European service providers fell to less than 16 percent in the second quarter of 2021, despite rising revenues. With 2 percent market share in Europe, Deutsche Telekom is market leader among the European cloud providers. (Source<\/a>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The problem: Hyperscalers from the United States dominate but they do not comply with European standards and regulations regarding data protection. In a 2021 survey among key experts working on European technology and digital policy in government, nearly 93 percent of respondents believed that the European Union depends too much on the United States in the area of cloud computing. (Source<\/a>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Data security has become more and more important to organizations and society in general. The fact that most of the data is stored in data centers in the US and thus falls under US regulations (notably the CLOUD Act which allows the US government to access data stored by US cloud providers \u2013 even if the data centers are located in Europe) raises concern in the EU. (Source<\/a>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Microsoft has added to the pressure in the office software market by announcing that it will only support a cloud-based version of Office beginning in 2025<\/a>. This means that, despite the issues with data security, public administration would be forced to use Microsoft\u2019s cloud offerings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Digital sovereignty<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Ideally, organizations and individuals should be able to exchange data as they see fit while maintaining complete control over what happens to their data and who has access to it. Decentralized cloud computing could contribute to more independence and sovereignty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Gaia-X project: a European Cloud?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The goal of Gaia-X is to create a common European \u201cdata infrastructure\u201d<\/a>. Based on standardized interfaces, cloud services and data from many different companies will be connected and made available to users. Thus, Gaia-X is not a cloud or provider, but rather an ecosystem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What makes the idea special is a couple of things:<\/p>\n\n\n\n