Plattform Industrie 4.0 is currently increasingly involved in the European lighthouse project Gaia-X: Since the beginning of the year, the platform has been an official member of the Belgian foundation driving the project (Gaia-X AISBL). In addition, Roland Sommer has recently become part of the management board of the newly founded Gaia-X Hub Austria.

Gaia-X addresses various topics that are highly relevant for Austrian industry. These include, for example, the storage of production and process data, the infrastructure required for this, or common rules needed for cross-company data exchange.

The Industrie 4.0 platform would like to bring the topic of Gaia-X closer to its members and increasingly involve them in activities at the European level. For this reason, an event series called “Inside Gaia-X” was recently initiated. The aim of the events is to provide more in-depth and practical insights into the topic.
Roland Fadrany was invited to speak at the first “Inside Gaia-X” event. As a partner at Detecon International, which is part of T-Systems, Mr. Fadrany dealt with Gaia-X in depth. In his input, Mr. Fadrany described his experiences with Gaia-X and explained the motivation behind T-Systems’ commitment.

The aim of Gaia-X is to address current challenges facing the European data economy. These include, for example, non-existent interfaces (APIs), the lack of transparency of offerings, or different regional legal interpretations. In conjunction with regulatory measures, such as the Digital Services Act or the Digital Markets Act, Gaia-X aims to build a European data infrastructure.

In his presentation, Mr. Fadrany clarified what Gaia-X is – and what it is not, e.g. a cloud provider. Many approaches are continuously being developed within the growing Gaia-X community, e.g. around the topic of labeling. Attempts are being made to make abstract terms such as “digitally sovereign” tangible and comparable. However, concrete results and projects can already be found. For example, the Eclipse Data Space Connector can be used for cross-company data exchange in a data space. With the Sovereign Cloud Stack, a standard for cloud operators based on open source software is currently being developed.

In his role, Roland Fadrany also accompanied major projects in the Gaia-X environment, which he addressed in his presentation.

As part of Catena-X, a Data Space is being created for the European automotive industry. This Data Space is intended to be a role model for the European industry and enable different use cases. This includes, for example, traceability within a value chain, which should simplify the recycling of individual components. Structura-X and the planned IPCEI-CIS start with the European cloud infrastructure.

The “Gaia-X Federation Services” are in turn a series of software components. These are currently being developed in parallel to Gaia-X itself in separate projects. Once development is complete, the Federation Services will provide an open option for data storage and exchange based on Gaia-X principles.

We would like to thank Roland Fadrany for the exciting discussion and T-Systems Austria for the cooperation and the opportunity to hold the event at the T-Center.

During the “Inside Gaia-X” event, Mr. Fadrany provided insights into Gaia-X from his perspective at Detecon and T-Systems. In the meantime, Mr. Fadrany has taken on a new position – as COO of Gaia-X AISBL, he will play a leading role for the European lead project in the future.

The Industrie 4.0 platform is planning further activities and events on Gaia-X. If you would like to stay informed about this, please contact .

© Text by Plattform 4.0