German companies rely on Gaia-X | TechBuzz

Gaia-X meets with broad interest in the German economy. Almost half of all companies with 20 or more employees (46 percent) state that they are interested in using services from the European cloud and data infrastructure. 14 percent have already firmly planned the use of Gaia-X-compliant services, 32 percent can imagine it. In 43 percent of the companies, Gaia-X is currently not an issue, the rest have not yet formed an opinion. This is the result of a representative survey of 604 companies commissioned by the digital association Bitkom. “The European economy and in particular industry need high-performance, secure and trustworthy technologies and offers in the cloud, edge and data sectors. Gaia-X and related projects make a strategically important contribution here,” said Bitkom President Achim Berg in the run-up to the second Anniversary of the joint German-French presentation of the Gaia-X project. As the project progressed, it became more and more European. “Joint European action is a key criterion for success in strengthening digital sovereignty and the digital competitiveness of the European economy,” Berg continued.

Large companies are currently more interested in using Gaia-X than smaller ones. 12 percent of the companies with 20 to 99 employees say that they have already planned an assignment, and another 32 percent are interested. Among the companies with 100 to 499 employees, 18 percent have firm plans and 37 percent are interested. And in large companies with more than 500 employees, 32 percent have already planned to use it, and another 32 percent can imagine using it. Berg: “It will be crucial that these various projects bring concrete added value for the companies and thus assert themselves on the market. Gaia-X can make a decisive contribution to increasing resilience, data sovereignty and digital sovereignty in the EU.”

Privacy comes first

By far the three most important criteria for using Gaia-X-compliant services in companies are compliance and legal certainty in data protection (55 percent), high standards for IT security (51 percent) and sovereign and trusting data exchange (46 percent). . A range of functions that is comparable to the market leaders (30 percent) follows at a distance. Around a quarter of the companies named secure and sovereign identity management (24 percent), a simple change of provider (23 percent) and greater product attractiveness through the Gaia-X certification (23 percent). An image gain (12 percent), the price (10 percent) and the better combination of different offers (8 percent) are rarely mentioned as criteria.

The first Gaia-X-based products and offerings are expected to be launched later this year. This is how the cloud provider consortium Structura-X was formed in the area of ​​Gaia-X services. In addition, in the cloud sector, the EU member states are funding projects with the “IPCEI-CIS” program in which cloud and edge computing capacities in the EU are to be strengthened. In addition to the activities of the Gaia-X organization in the EU states, various initiatives are being promoted, such as the establishment of data rooms. These include Catena-X and the Mobility Data Space from Germany.