GAIA-X (European Association for Data and Cloud): The sovereign European Cloud

Formally introduced on June 4, 2020 by Peter Altmaier, the German Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Energy, and his French counterpart, Bruno Le Maire, the GAIA-X (European Association for Data and Cloud) consortium brings together major Franco-German industry players and digital technology and research actors.

With this project, Europe intends to break the currently rigid structure of the Cloud market, and strengthen confidence in its infrastructure and the digital sovereignty of European users.

GAIA-X (European Association for Data and Cloud) will help establish common rules and standards that companies can use as a basis for strengthening their value propositions. GAIA-X (European Association for Data and Cloud) is a European Cloud project focused on transparency, and we are proud to be one of the 22 founding members.

The fundamental rules of the GAIA-X (European Association for Data and Cloud) platform: transparency, interoperability, reversibility and trust.

Servane Augier – Chief Operating Officer- 3DS OUTSCALE

Why has 3DS OUTSCALE joined the GAIA-X (European Association for Data and Cloud) project?

3DS OUTSCALE, committed to a European hyper-confidence Cloud

At 3DS OUTSCALE, we are deeply convinced of the importance of offering an efficient and competitive, secure and reliable Cloud ecosystem in Europe. To this end, since our creation in 2010, we have been delivering a distinctive, high-performance offer that is complete with all the features of infrastructure services and that offers the highest levels of security (SecNumCloud, ISO 27001/27017/27018 and HDS). It was therefore quite natural for us to join the GAIA-X (European Association for Data and Cloud) project. As a pure player, it is our responsibility as a pure player to convince European companies that a reliable alternative to GAFAM providers exists – one that, moreover, comes in a new format: that of a network of strategic players.

The GAIA-X (European Association for Data and Cloud) ecosystem

Leading players

Hence, we started working with great enthusiasm with the other founding members of the project, including the Cloud-using industries and some research institutes: EDF, Amadeus, Safran, Siemens, BMW and Bosch to name a few. Their feedback will be valuable and will guarantee the relevance of the project. In addition, we have begun listing out the sovereign SaaS, IaaS and PaaS solutions that are already available. Gradually, they are expected to join our consortium. Soon, European companies will be able to decide, freely and with full knowledge, which Cloud service and infrastructure to adopt to meet strict requirements at multiple levels.

The project’s commitments

Trust starts with transparency

All members of the GAIA-X (European Association for Data and Cloud) consortium will have to submit to a repository, which will list mandatory attributes, such as the indication of where data are stored. They will also have to specify whether they are subject to regulations such as the GDPR or the CLOUD Act and specify the standards under which they operate. Finally, the services offered will need to ensure interoperability with the other systems of the ecosystem, in order to facilitate data exchange, portability and sharing. Thus, transparency will be at the heart of the GAIA-X (European Association for Data and Cloud) project.

By the end of the year, GAIA-X (European Association for Data and Cloud) should have implemented the first practical use cases. This is a challenge that will motivate us, along with the other members of the consortium, to set the rules and find ways to monitor their effective application, all while defining the common standard that will be used to promote interoperability between our services. GAIA-X’s (European Association for Data and Cloud) strength lies in its European dimension. Whereas sovereign Cloud projects were limited to a national level and therefore built around a market that was too limited, this project presents itself as a federation of existing, cross-border services and solutions, – and this makes all the difference!”