The formation of the new coalition was officially announced during the week of the ECP annual festival, entirely dedicated to ‘the successful and secure digital society’ and the major international event of the French-German data and cloud initiative GAIA-X.
Cloud services are essential building blocks for many innovations based on new technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT). Such innovations should contribute to solutions to all kinds of societal challenges but will not function without storage, computing power and software from the Cloud.
It is just harder for smaller European players to compete in a vast international Cloud playing field, where larger players have a vast advantage. Requirements on reliability and ensuring privacy also weigh extra heavily on smaller players. Dutch and European Cloud providers therefore often rely on service providers from other continents. Dutch players in the Cloud sector are well equipped to reap the benefits of new developments around Cloud technologies.
Mutual cooperation between these players is important and a coalition is therefore a good start, says Ruud Alaerds, director of DHPA: “These problems create barriers to the use of cloud services, thus inhibiting the expansion of Dutch and European players. With this coalition, we want to contribute to finding solutions nationally, but also Europe-wide as in the GAIA-X initiative and the Industry Alliance for Cloud & Data recently announced by the European Commission. This is only the beginning and we call on others in the sector to join us so that we can take up the challenge together.”
Actions coalition
The Dutch Cloud Infrastructure Coalition aims to create a more balanced playing field for cloud service providers by:
- promoting innovations, public-private partnerships and developing new standards
- achieving uniform proof of collateral for Cloud services, facilitating entry into the European market
- driving proactive involvement of the Dutch public authorities to promote national interests.
In the coming period, the coalition will focus on exploring the role GAIA-X will play in this and on collaborating with other Dutch stakeholders. These include the Data Share Coalition, the Online Trust Coalition (OTC), the Dutch AI Coalition (NLAIC), initiatives in Healthcare, digital government and Smart Industry programmes. In addition, the coalition seeks further cooperation with the Dutch government and European stakeholders to contribute to the fulfilment of European ambitions in the areas of Cloud and Data, cyber security, and integrating the European market.
Cloud Infrastructure Coalition (CiC) – (first) participants:
NDIX, Leaseweb, BIT, Intermax, Uniserver, Centric, SURF, Interconnect, EGP, Eurofiber, Ekco, Fuga Cloud en i3D.net
Cloud Infrastructure Coalition (CiC) – supporters and partners
Dutch Hosting Provider Association (DHPA), ISPConnect and De Stichting Digitale Infrastructuur Nederland (DINL) together with TNO as knowledge partner.
