Synergy Research data shows that by the end of the third quarter of 2021 hyperscale providers were operating 700 large data centers globally, with the US accounting for 49% of their capacity, measured by critical IT load. The EMEA region accounts for 19% of the capacity and China 15%.
The US share of worldwide hyperscaler data center capacity is declining, but is doing so slowly at just a percentage point per year, according to Synergy.
Given the strength of major US players, European governments are keen to ensure their region is not left behind in the creation of next-generation cloud-based infrastructure and ecosystems.
Ministers from France and Germany speaking at the
Gaia-X summit, 18-19 November, reiterated their political support for European-federated cloud services.
In late 2020, Germany and France were behind the establishment of an
Important Project of Common European Interest on Next Generation Cloud Infrastructure and Services (IPCEI-CIS), which will allow national governments to subsidize the sector.
Investments will set out to “provide our economy with an ecosystem of competitive European technology solutions that respect our values and laws,” according to Bruno le Maire, the French Minister of the Economy and Finance.
And Mathieu Weill, head of Digital economy Department, Ministry of Economy, France, speaking at the Gaia-X Summit, said: “In France, we're very committed to building European cloud and federated services … We are planning to mobilize 420 million euros to support the French cloud industry.”
Work is underway in France to create data spaces in key sectors including energy, finance and agriculture, Weill explained.
Germany has also undertaken several initiatives to drive cloud-based infrastructure investment and development. In March the government made available around 190 million euros for a competition for innovative and practical applications and databases in the Gaia-x digital ecosystem and has chosen 16 flagship projects as a result, said Stefan Schnorr, Director-General for Digital and Innovation Policy, Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy.
“Gaia X will generate new business models for European cloud providers. And that is why there is financial support for the next generation cloud infrastructure and services through IPCEI,” said Schnorr.
Gaia-X is not the only initiative – several sovereign data clouds are being created. And nor is Gaia-X membership purely European:
Google, AWS, Alibaba Singapore and NTT are among its international members.
At the European level, “in excess of 6 billion euros…have been delegated to cloud,” according to Roberto Viola, Director General of DG CONNECT (Directorate General of Communication, Networks, Content and Technology, speaking at the Gaia-X summit.
At the same time, Europe is also expected to adopt
the Data Act, which aims to encourage B2B data sharing without undermining European data protection.
“We are confident that the data governance act that we propose will be the European law, and that will introduce important elements for management of data spaces, such as neutral brokers, data donation,…partnership between the publisher and databases,” said Viola.
“We want to go ahead with our strategy when it comes to regulation. We hope to proceed at the beginning of next year the data act.” The act will “look at the aspects of utilizing the data in a fair way by every participant in the value chain, and also the issue about cloud - how to make sure that the rights of the user...can be safeguarded,” explained Viola. “And of course, there's no cloud interoperability, there's no cloud portability if you don't have the right standards, and once again, we're looking at data spaces when looking at cloud regulation.”