Gaia-X is the European response to US and Chinese hyperscalers (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, IBM Cloud, Alibaba Cloud). However, Gaia-X is not a "European Champion", but a network of European providers. Within this network standards, interfaces, rules for identity management and a billing system are implemented. This should "enable interoperability and portability of infrastructure, data and services". High standards of data protection, data security and energy efficiency are to be applied.
This "marketplace" is to be realized by the end of 2022. Until then there is still a lot of homework to be done. In particular, critics point out that coordination between the various participants is an enormous challenge, especially the agreement on standards and their implementation.
