Summary

With Gaia-X, representatives from business, science and politics on an international level create a proposal for the next generation of data infrastructure: an open, transparent and secure digital ecosystem, where data and services can be made available, collated and shared in an environment of trust.

Gaia-X is a project initiated by Europe for Europe and beyond. Representatives from business, politics, and science from Europe and around the globe are working together, hand in hand, to create a federated and secure data infrastructure. Companies and citizens will collate and share data – in such a way that they keep control over them. They should decide what happens to their data, where it is stored, and always retain data sovereignty.

The architecture of Gaia-X is based on the principle of decentralization. Gaia-X is the result of a multitude of individual platforms that all follow a common standard – the Gaia-X standard. Together, we are developing a data infrastructure based on the values of openness, transparency, and trust. So, what emerges is not a cloud, but a networked system that links many cloud services providers together.

Scope

A Federated and Secure Data Infrastructure

Innovation through digital sovereignty – that’s the goal of Gaia-X. We achieve this by establishing an ecosystem in which data is made available, collated and shared in a trustworthy environment. The users always retain sovereignty over their data. So, what emerges is not a cloud, but a federated system that links many cloud services providers and users together.

Gaia-X promotes federations, a new model of cloud data exchange that is orthogonal to the existing dominant model of hyper-concentration of data. Data are acquired in all sectors across the globe. They shall no more be concentrated in single places. The new way of computing is a continuum from the edge, i.e., from devices and data sources in the field directly to the cloud. This minimizes the need for data bandwidth, bringing the computing processes to the data and adapting to the phenomenon of data-gravity.

Through Gaia-X federations and federated services, several data owners can exchange data amongst each other minimizing data transfers and leveraging services for data that are guaranteed in terms of identity, description, service characteristic, service controllability and, more in general, can be trusted.

Through Gaia-X federations, several technology providers can create and offer a network of services with common identity, common self-description, common controllability, and interoperability across their nodes. This creates the necessary trust, the quality of services and the critical mass necessary to create value out of data and to deal with data-gravity and data distribution.

Through a federated model, Gaia-X providers offer a value that is not possible to obtain from highly centralized, proprietary, closed, non-federated and non-interoperable technologies that currently dominate the market and, as a matter of fact, do not provide for the level of trust requested by users.

Domains

  • Federation Services
  • Standards
  • Data Spaces
  • Services

Partners

Huge list, available at the GAIA-X Website