OpenUK joins Euro data infrastructure Gaia-X project as ‘UK lifeline’ amid Brexit maelstrom
OpenUK is the open technology advocate organisation for open data, open source hardware and open source software in the UK – so yeah, pretty open all round.
The organisation has now joined the Gaia-X project to represent the UK in the development of Gaia-X in the future.
Gaia-X is a project initiated in Europe to develop common requirements for a European data infrastructure – openness, transparency and the ability to connect to other European countries are central to the aims tabled by Gaia-X.
The Gaia-X project seeks to develop cloud infrastructure for Europe that is secure, federated and interoperable.
In practice, it should help companies in Europe run on cloud services that meet specific standards, that support the digital sovereignty of cloud services users and that provide the scalability required for modern businesses and by the European Commission.
“Whatever the [Brexit] 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.
Brock is arguably nothing but determined, it will be interesting to see how her business and technical knowledge combine to help drive this project forwards.
Open Compute Project (OCP)
OpenUK’s participation in the Gaia-X project has been sponsored by the Open Compute Project (OCP).
“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,” Steve Helvie, vice president of channel at the Open Compute Project.
Rafael Laguna de la Vera, CEO at SprinD, Germany´s Federal Agency for Disruptive Innovation has also commented on this story to say that OpenUK is the ‘UK lifeline’ in Gaia-X, providing as it does opportunities for UK organisations to get involved in this European cloud project.
Approved image us: OpenUK