Gaia-X: the European cloud that aims to break the hegemony of Amazon, Microsoft and Google in the cloud

This European infrastructure project was born with the objective of “promoting data sovereignty” and avoiding technological dependence on American giants in the cloud.

Europa aims to confront the predominance of the American giants Amazon, Microsoft y Google in the provision of cloud services with the launch of the project Gaia-X.

The initiative is promoted by the governments of Germany and France and has the support of around twenty European companies and organizations (digital, industrial, academic and association leaders), including two Spanish companies: Amadeus y Gigas. In addition, technology companies such as Atos, Dassault Systemes, Orange, Siemens, SAP, Robert Bosch, Scaleway o Deutsche Telekom.

Now, the Gaia-X Foundation was born with the joint commitment to promote a transparent, open and widely participatory European process. Its activity has as its starting point the work already carried out by France and Germany and supported by more than 300 companies. With the creation of the foundation, the project enters a new stage of development and marks an important milestone in the European Union's goal of consolidating its leadership in the global data economy.

The creation of digital ecosystems requires the promotion of trust and interoperability between all users and cloud providers. Gaia-X will address this challenge with a set of common policies, a “standards architecture” and a portfolio of “federation services” that bring together existing cloud providers and their services, where data and applications can be managed while ensuring full control. It will also allow organizations of all sizes and sectors to benefit from hyperscale offerings in Europe, while respecting a set of essential policies.

Thanks to this initiative, administrations and companies will have in 2021 a alternative to services as widespread worldwide as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure y Google Cloud. Without a doubt, the recent geopolitical tensions due to COVID-19 between the United States and China have demonstrated more than ever that users demand transparency, data protection, reversibility and security at the European level, while gaining resistance in the general infrastructure.