Climate, economy and coronavirus – in her first State of the Union address, Ursula von der Leyen not only addressed the major challenges facing the EU, but also solutions such as GAIA-X. OVHcloud and T-Systems are now exploring for the first time how the GAIA-X guidelines can be translated into concrete offers.
According to Ursula von der Leyen, one thing is clear: Europe is currently at a crossroads. It is true that the European Union (EU) has learned from the coronavirus how fragile coexistence is. However, it has also experienced how crises can strengthen a community. In her first State of the Union address the President of the EU Commission rightly emphasised the unprecedented performance of doctors, carers and relatives during the pandemic – but she also mentioned the importance of digitalisation in order to overcome the challenges of these times: “We have achieved more digital innovation and transformation in a few weeks than we have in years.”
A pace that now has to be maintained. The EU therefore wishes to focus on three areas: Common data spaces for energy and health care, the application and promotion of artificial intelligence and the creation of a European cloud based on GAIA-X. “This is why we are going to build a European cloud within the framework of NextGenerationEU – on the basis of GAIA-X,” said von der Leyen on 16 September in Brussels. 20 percent of the Recovery and Resilience Facility NextGenerationEU is therefore to be channelled into digitalisation.
OVHcloud and T-Systems: Public Cloud offer based on GAIA-X
The EuroCloud member OVHcloud and T-Systems are making sure that GAIA-X does not remain a theory. The French cloud provider and the German digital service provider are planning a public-cloud offer which is oriented on the principles and guidelines of GAIA-X. This is allow users to benefit from full GDPR-conformity and open standards, but also from reversibility, data protection and the highest security standards.
In order to achieve this, OVHcloud brings its proprietary server technologies and its own open source-based information system into the partnership. T-Systems secures, operates and manages the infrastructure in its German data centers. The offer based on a public open-stack cloud platform is aimed at administrations, infrastructure operators and companies from Germany, France and Europe working in strategic and sensitive areas of public interest. “We are particularly proud to work with T-Systems and to be the first provider of a truly sovereign public cloud offering based on the GAIA-X principles,” said Michel Paulin, CEO of OVHcloud.
First impulse to implement the idea of GAIA-X
The project is a first impulse to translate the idea of GAIA-X into services for the European market. In this way, the public cloud platform should also contribute to expanding the Use Case gallery of the GAIA-X initiative. T-Systems and OVHcloud are founding members of GAIA-X. The public-cloud offer should be available from the beginning of next year.
