Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. is betting on the success of a new European initiative that’s aimed at creating a unified ecosystem of cloud and data services protected by European data laws.

The company said today that its new HPE Solution Framework for Gaia-X is designed for companies, service providers and other organizations that want to participate in the initiative. Through it, the company said that it can support virtually all of the capabilities that are required to provide and consume data and services within a decentralized, federated cloud environment.

The Gaia-X project is seen as an attempt by Europe to gain more independence from big cloud giants in the U.S. and China. The aim of the initiative is to establish an “interoperable data exchange” through which businesses can share data under the protection of European laws, which are renowned for their much greater emphasis on data privacy.

Backed by the European Union and led by the nonprofit group Gaia-X AISBL, the project envisions various cloud services suppliers linked together through an interoperable data exchange that would act as a vessel for data across industries. It will also act as a repository that businesses can search through to find specific data services around artificial intelligence, analytics and the “internet of things.”

The backers of Gaia-X say they’re not trying to compete with the likes of Amazon Web Services Inc.’s, Microsoft Corp.’s and Google LLC’s public clouds, but rather, linking existing cloud services into a unified ecosystem. But Gaia-X will make domestic European cloud providers more visible and at the same time make it simpler for companies across various industries to exchange data safely and securely.

The problem many European firms have is that they’re forced to rely on U.S. or Chinese cloud infrastructure providers that are subject to different laws governing data ownership, processing and privacy. So it means they struggle to protect their users’ data when it’s stored on a server in the U.S., for example, where it’s subject to different laws.

Essentially, Gaia-X is aimed at reducing Europe’s reliance on international cloud providers and encouraging business to look at domestic alternatives that are protected by European data laws. It will enable companies to maintain ownership of their data by choosing what they do and don’t share, and saying what it can be used for. Its backers say it will also stimulate cross-industry collaboration by making it easier for companies to search for cloud services and exchange data for collaborative projects.

Johannes Koch, senior vice president of Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co.’s Germany, Austria and Switzerland units, said Gaia-X will be key to enabling the next wave of digital transformation in Europe. He added that it aligns with the company’s own strategy of unlocking the value of distributed data across locations and clouds.

“However, Gaia-X does not do the job alone,” Koch said. “It requires a range of capabilities to benefit from this platform. In essence, you must know how to monetize data and put it to work. That’s exactly what we help customers achieve with our Gaia-X solutions.”

A key element of the HPE Solution Framework for Gaia-X is a reference architecture that defines the components necessary to build such an ecosystem that will ensure secure infrastructure operations for decentralized workloads.

The company said the HPE Ezmeral Software Platform will serve as the technological foundation of its Solution Framework for Gaia-X, providing capabilities such as unified access to distributed data and unified control of distributed Kubernetes clusters. In addition, the framework also uses the Secure Production Identity Framework For Everyone and SPIFFE Runtime Environment standards to authenticate software services securely.

Meanwhile, the Cloud28+ business platform will help Gaia-X participants to leverage and monetize their data and services better through an open marketplace, HPE said. Finally, the company announced a HPE Roadmap Service for Gaia-X that will help customers to assess their readiness to participate in Gaia-X and develop a roadmap to do exactly that.

HPE said it has already collaborated with a number of European organizations to help them take part in the Gaia-X ecosystem, including Orange Business Services, the business services arm of telecommunications firm Orange S.A.

Cedric Parent, deputy chief executive at Orange Cloud, said his company was not only helping to shape the technical and dataspace foundations of Gaia-X, but also adapting its Orange Cloud services to its specifications. “We benefit from HPE’s deep expertise and solution offering, which comprehensively support the developments needed to fully benefit from decentralized infrastructures,” he said.

Constellation Research Inc. analyst Holger Mueller told SiliconANGLE that Europe’s efforts to get what would effectively be its own cloud platform are entirely focused on Gaia-X, and that it will provide a big opportunity for local European cloud providers such as OVH Groupe SAS.

“It is good to see a major hardware vendor like HPE is addressing the standards required and planning to compete in the space, as all clouds need hardware vendor support,” Mueller said. “The more competition there is, the better the cloud standard will do.”

HPE said the HPE Solution Framework for Gaia-X and the HPE Roadmap Service for Gaia-X are both available in Europe from today, and that the various interfaces and connectors needed will be made available as soon as Gaia-X specifications are made final.

Image: Gaia-X