Dresden/Berlin, 29.05.2020. Around seven months after the official announcement of the GAIA-X project, The networked, open and secure data and infrastructure ecosystems based on European values, Cloud&Heat Technologies GmbH, as a member of the GAIA-X consortium, demonstrates on 4 June at an international and prominent video conference a first Demonstrator. The Franco-German event is attended by the Federal Minister of Economics Peter Altmaier and Anja Karliczek, Federal Minister of Education and Research, also the French Minister for the Economy and Finance, Bruno Le Maire.
In a round table discussion initiated by Cloud&Heat Technologies, GAIA-X project participants and representatives from business and politics discussed digital sovereignty, value creation and the design and chances of success of GAIA-X with journalists in Berlin in January 2020. The criticism was that there are still no tangible results. With the official presentation of a first GAIA-X demonstrator, an important milestone has now been reached.
Interoperability of providers and portability of data
The simulation, presented by Cloud&Heat as a lead member of the consortium, shows the vision and principles of GAIA-X in basic steps. Users must be able to choose between different cloud providers and use their data and applications freely between the different providers as well as combine different services. In the selected demonstrator, the customer, in the example the Big Data company AI4BD, formulates his criteria from topics such as data security and data protection or even ecological sustainability via the GAIA-X portal of the German Edge Cloud and selects his favoured provider. The request is then distributed via Cloud&Heat's intelligent orchestration software "Krake" and the service is started.
From hyperscaler to local provider
The hyperscaler Amazon Web Services (AWS) provides the requested data in encrypted form to the security-hardened cloud environment of a local provider, where the data is decrypted and processed using a machine learning algorithm. This is where the expertise of secunet Security Networks AG, secustack GmbH, a joint venture between Cloud&Heat and secunet, and NTT Data Deutschland GmbH comes into play. The data is then passed on to the user. The user thus combines the strengths of different providers in order to be able to realise an AI service on an infrastructure that meets his expectations in terms of performance and security. The German
Telekom AG supports the development of the demonstrator as an additional coordinator.
Additional use cases and functions for the demonstrator
Dr Marius Feldmann, COO of Cloud&Heat Technologies GmbH and CEO of secustack GmbH, says: "I am delighted that we can now present the first tangible results of GAIA-X to the public. With the presentation of the demonstrator, the project achieves an important step on the way to a European digital ecosystem, especially since parts of it have even already been programmed. On this basis, we can not only vividly explain the GAIA-X principle to the world, but more easily identify hurdles. The next goal is to expand the demonstrator with additional use cases and add additional functions, especially in the area of identity management. I would like to thank all the members of the consortium, without whom we would not have been able to present the GAIA-X version in such a vivid way. "GAIA-X aims to reduce dependency on a few cloud services One of the goals of the GAIA-X project is to break down the rigid structures in the cloud market as well as to
to restore the digital sovereignty of users and trust in digital infrastructures in Germany and Europe. The aim is to offer the possibility to orchestrate cloud applications across providers and thus to combine the different features of the providers individually and expediently. The end result should be an efficient, high-performance multi-provider system that is transparent and verifiable.
Link to the registration for the event on 04 June 2020:
https://www.bmwi-registrierung.de/GAIA-X-ProgressReport/
