European digital companies and cloud providers have launched an initiative for common infrastructure services that meet Gaia-X requirements. 28 companies and organizations, including Atos, agreed to make their cloud services Gaia-X compliant. The Lighthouse project “Structura-X” complements industry-specific initiatives for the automotive sector (Catena-X), agriculture (AgriGaia) and finance (EuroDat). Initial Gaia-X compliant offerings are expected to be ready by the middle of this year.
The initiative was born out of the need to build a Gaia-X-compatible infrastructure in Europe, alongside industry services. In coordination with the Gaia-X Association, seven European digital providers initially agreed on the common goal: Atos, Aruba.it, DE-CIX, Deutsche Telekom, Engineering, Noovle and TOP-IX. In the meantime, additional companies from all over Europe have joined. To date, this adds up to 28 Structura-X members from 10 countries.
“We are proud to launch Structura-X, together with key European cloud providers and digital companies. Structura-X will enable the necessary scale for new cross-sector and cross-country collaboration in the cloud, to foster a federated European cloud and edge infrastructure. As part of this initiative, Atos will bring its digital security solutions and products, as European market leader, to ensure the complete sovereignty and security of cloud infrastructure solutions.” said Santi Ribas, Head of Cloud Enterprise Solutions, Atos.
Structura-X invites more cloud service providers to join. The common goal is to shape their existing infrastructure services into an eco-system for European data sovereignty. An overarching European cloud infrastructure is being created. Users will be able to test and deploy their services and data rooms in a Gaia-X-approved infrastructure.
Structura-X will work closely with Gaia-X, which among other activities defines the technical framework for data sovereignty. At the same time, Structura-X will enable the necessary scale for new cross-sector and cross-country collaboration in the cloud. The previous fragmentation of the European cloud market will thus be overcome.
Atos is involved in several projects around cloud and digital sovereignty, and recently launched Atos OneCloud Sovereign Shield, in response to the growing demands of organizations and governments for digital sovereignty. The solution enables Atos custumers to meet the challenges of managing their data in the edge-to-cloud continuum, in line with the highest jurisdictional data governance requirements.
