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The interest in the European cloud and data infrastructure Gaia-X has risen significantly in recent months. According to a statement by the Federal Ministry of Economics (BMWi), in addition to the 22 founding companies from France and Germany, "well over 100 other companies" have now expressed interest in project membership. The cloud initiative presented in October 2019 is still in the start-up phase. Further companies therefore have the chance to become "members of the first hour" in the Gaia-X organisation.
The goal of Gaia-X is the development of a European Cloudwhich is intended to provide an alternative to the currently dominant services from the U.S.A. and China. Currently, the members are working on a concept that uses open standards and open source applications to support existing and new Hosting-offers. A so-called hyperscaler like the cloud solutions from MicrosoftHowever, Gaia-X is not intended to become a joint venture between Amazon, Google and Alibaba. Instead, the plan is to network several small providers from Europe into a common infrastructure.
Minimum Viable Product (MVP) in 2021
The goal of the Gaia-X cloud initiative is to create a way to provide secure Data to be able to exchange data. The strict criteria of the General Data Protection Regulation (DSVGO) are to be adhered to. Currently dominant cloud services from U.S.A. such as Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud and Amazon AWS, on the other hand, can very likely not be used in compliance with the GDPR according to the ECJ ruling ("Schrems II"), because the operators must also follow the American Cloud Act.
During the recent Gaia-X virtual conference, the Ministry of Economy emphasized that a Minimum Viable Product will be launched next year, which can be used as a prototype to test critical functions and for further development. However, a comprehensive and all-encompassing solution will most likely not follow for several years.
IBM, Microsoft, Google and Amazon are Gaia-X members
With IBM, Microsoft, Google and Amazon, a large number of the most influential cloud operators also belong to the Gaia-X project. According to Minister Altmaier, these memberships do not contradict the basic idea of the cloud initiative, as long as the companies are able to offer their Contributions did not violate the guidelines of Gaia-X.
According to Boris Otto, head of the Fraunhofer Institute for Software and Systems Engineering (ISST), "the process of certifying whether services are Gaia-X compliant still needs time. It is therefore unclear when the large number of still open company inquiries will be answered and when the first Gaia-X services can be used. According to Otto, "the first certified Gaia-X applications are realistic by the middle of next year."
