GAIA-X.NRW – a Data infrastructure initiative

Most Popular Insights

GAIA-X aims at building a unified European Data-Infrastructure which acts as a cross border Ecosystem. GAIA-X.NRW aims at enabling small and middle-sized companies to participate in the data boom and to reap benefits by being able to use data provided by large companies. Specific use cases are being realized some of which include mobility, logistics, industry 4.0, production and the energy sector. But not only does GAIA-X aim at enabling everyone to utilize data, it also aims at taking the power of locking-in data away from large companies. Minister of Economics, Innovation, Digitalization and Energy of North Rhine-Westphalia Andreas Pinkwart describes the current situation as follows:

“Digitalization places high demands on the data sovereignty of companies. The major cloud providers come almost exclusively from the USA and act on the principle of ‘once in, never out’. It is essential for the competitiveness of our economy that we become more independent and create European cloud offerings. GAIA-X is the right approach for this. We are making use of the strong North Rhine-Westphalian roots and, with GAIA-X.NRW, are bringing the initiative into broad use in our state. In this way, citizens and companies will get cloud offerings without a lock-in effect.”

This statement underlines what GAIA-X stands for and what the aim of the project is, the project wants to enable Europe to be on the forefront of innovation and wants to utilize data to do so, this is a natural next step in the evolution of the industry and the vast opportunities that lie hidden behind data.

The Deutsche Telekom is one of the founding members of GAIA-X and identifies fully with the spirit and the image that is presented by this project, everyone should be able to utilize data and get information hidden behind that data to make better, more informed decisions. Deutsche Telekom’s Data Intelligence Hub is a data analytics platform that is an answer to the problems that companies of any size face when they analyze data and find hidden patterns that tell a clear path through a complex problem.

“We need this ecosystem to avoid being left behind in future fields such as artificial intelligence. For Europe’s economy to remain competitive, it must use its own data intelligently. We need a secure and sovereign pan-European exchange of data to work with and develop innovative business models in Europe.”

Claudia Nemat, part of the Telekom Technology and Innovations Board

High quality tools and datasets on the Data Intelligence Hub help our customers gain understanding of their data without having to think about analytics environments. The Telekom Data Intelligence Hub gives you an opportunity to not worry about onboarding new tools onto your platform, that work is already done, and the tools and datasets can be used right away to solve your most complex challenges. Furthermore, you have the opportunity to exchange data in a peer-to-peer fashion. The architecture of the Data Intelligence Hub is based on the IDSA Architecture Standards that ensure full control over your data at any point in time meaning that data sovereignty is a top priority for the Data Intelligence Hub, as is the spirit of GAIA-X.

Further Information:

Acknowledgement: This article was written with support of Sean Bäker during his time as a dual student within the Telekom Data Intelligence Hub.

Chris S. Langdon
Chris S. Langdon

Business Lead, Data Analytics Executive, Catena-X Product Manager

Read more