Press Release
OpenUK, the Open Technology advocate organisation for Open Data, Open Source Hardware and Open Source Software in the UK, today announced that it has joined the GAIA-X project for federated cloud in Europe. Joining the project, supported by the Open Compute Project, OpenUK will represent the UK in the development of GAIA-X in the future.
GAIA-X is a project to develop cloud infrastructure for Europe that is secure, federated and interoperable. It is designed to help organisations and businesses in Europe and around the world support an open and transparent digital ecosystem. In practice, it should help companies in Europe run on cloud services that meet specific European standards and values, that support the digital sovereignty of cloud service users, and that provide the scalability required for modern businesses and by the European Commission.
For the UK, as a third country after leaving the EU, both understanding GAIA-X and participating in the project will be potentially important for technology and cloud companies that want to do business with their counterparts in Europe.
“GAIA-X is an ambitious project designed to support Open Technology across Europe, and we support those objectives as an organisation. We will work with GAIA-X to represent the position of companies in the UK that have the same objectives around transparency and support for open source, helping those companies to succeed in any plans they have to support and integrate with GAIA-X in the future. Whatever the outcome of discussions between the UK and the European Union, supporting GAIA-X represents a great opportunity to further the cause of open source hardware, software and open data,” commented Amanda Brock, CEO at OpenUK.
OpenUK’s participation in the GAIA-X project has been sponsored by the Open Compute Project. "The Open Compute Project (OCP) is excited to sponsor OpenUK’s involvement in GAIA-X. Europe’s strategic direction to have a secure, federated and transparent infrastructure with a focus on open hardware aligns well with our OCP tenets of scale, impact, efficiency and openness. We view GAIA-X as a key initiative that will leverage open software and open hardware to instill confidence in data governance across Europe," said Steve Helvie, Vice President of Channel, Open Compute Project.
“OpenUK is the UK lifeline in GAIA-X, providing opportunities for UK organisations to get involved in this European cloud project,” commented Rafael Laguna de la Vera, CEO at SPRIND, Germany ´s Federal Agency for Disruptive Innovation.
