Achim Berg: “First GAIA-X initiatives should launch to market as soon as possible.”
Berlin, 4. June 2020 – The planned European cloud and data infrastructure GAIA-X is taking shape. Today, German and French companies and organisations present their plans for a common GAIA-X organisation and will publish first details about its technological architecture.
Bitkom President Achim Berg comments:
“The foundation of the GAIA-X organisation is a milestone on the path to a European cloud and data infrastructure. We welcome the steps taken by Germany and France to establish GAIA-X across Europe. Business stakeholders have signalled their interest, now the organisation needs to take off. GAIA-X needs to bring its first offers to market as soon as possible. This requires an open GAIA-X organisation to steer the cloud ecosystem and to attain the ambitious goals of the initiative.
Cloud and data infrastructure form the foundation of the digital economy - in Europe and elsewhere. GAIA-X can be a crucial building block for the planned European data spaces, as envisaged in the European data strategy. Europe can use this to strengthen its data sovereignty in the long term.”
According to a representative survey by Bitkom Research, 73 per cent of companies in Germany used cloud infrastructure in 2019. For these companies, data protection was the most important factor in their decision for a cloud service provider. Almost all companies surveyed (90 per cent) state that conformity with the General Data Protection Regulation is indispensable. For eight out of ten companies (79 per cent) a transparent security architecture was essential. Companies were also concerned with the location of their cloud service provider. For 67 per cent of companies, the cloud service provider had to have their main seat as well as their data centres (66 per cent) within the European Union.
