The Gaia X project bundles a lot of institutions and companies under the idea of creating a federated data infrastructure for Europe, its states, companies and citizens; a data infrastructure that answers the needs of European industry in terms of digital sovereignty while promoting innovation and competitiveness for European stakeholders. GAIA-X will enable mechanisms for the transparent, self-determined sharing and processing of data across different parties and will ensure that data-driven value creation remains with the individual participants. It will do this by defining the applicable policy rules and standards for federated ecosystems.[1]
On Wednesday, the 27th of January the kick-off webinar for a Cloud Expo Gaia X series during the year 2021 started.[2] These events discuss the idea of Gaia X, the status of the project, introduce the participants and invite more to join this pioneer initiative.
Gaia X will provide a base for digital business in Europe and define standards for a cloud ready infrastructure ecosystem. Europe as business location offers a lot of advantages and possibilities which should be used for digitization, cloud services and digital business from and for Europe.
Digital business is all about data. Gaining data sovereignty and control based on a stable and scalable infrastructure is therefore a main goal of Gaia X. This data ecosystem under the European law and governance is to be built by a growing network of institutions and organizations and ensures secure data management for new and innovative business and also scientific exchange.
The initiative publishes common rules and objective standards for technical infrastructure and data management – all open source. The solutions of Gaia X will be open to use by everybody. All underlying are the principles of Europe: fair data sharing, data privacy, openness, transparency, data sovereignty, highest security, sustainability and trust!
The different topics of the Gaia X project were discussed during this first event day in several panels with engaged companies and institutions. They informed about the infrastructure, architecture, but also about certifications and the involved organizations and their contribution to the project.
The panels worked two terms out which are important for the whole project: trust and sustainability. Future customers of Gaia X products need to have trust in the project and the product, that they guarantee all points belonging to Gaia X. Therefor a kind of Gaia X certification is planed which is given to Gaia X conform products, organizations or projects. These certificates proof the Gaia X compliance and customers can trust on them.
But sustainability is also becoming more an important topic for Europe and Gaia X. Right after the signing of the Climate Neutral Data Center Pact[3] of several companies also active in the Gaia X project the panels stat that Gaia X also need rules about the energy efficiency of the involved data centers to evolve sustainability in Europe.
Gaia X is gathering so many ideas, technical experts, future thinking and engaged people to let all the requirements and dreams come true: highest transparency, interoperability, verified self-descriptions, avoiding vendor-lockins, open source, open interfaces, open standards, secure environment, trustworthiness and sustainability.
More informations: https://open.spotify.com/episode/4cOJmQdaVqt6OYWcyME3aX?si=m5d6eiLfTR23S9BOqdhm7g
[1] https://www.bmwi.de/Redaktion/EN/Publikationen/gaia-x-policy-rules-and-architecture-of-standards.html
[2] https://www.cloudexpoeurope.de/gaia-x
[3] https://the-report.cloud/climate-neutral-data-centre-pact-commits-european-cloud-and-data-centre-industry-to-ambitious-sustainability-action