Even if most people first think of the US hyperscalers when they think of the cloud. Providers from Europe have long been competitive in many areas. European clouds are an important building block for greater digital sovereignty.
Ever since cloud computing made its breakthrough in the 2010s, there has been a desire in Europe and Germany to create a secure, data-sovereign cloud infrastructure for Europe. The current uncertain geopolitical situation and increasing regulatory requirements have led to a stronger focus on European cloud providers. However, if you look at the market share, it quickly becomes clear that American cloud providers clearly dominate the field. Although European providers are growing, their share of the European market remains low.
According to Christian Scholz, Vice President Cloud Business at Arvato Systems, more than individual initiatives are needed now, as no single provider in Europe has the financial resources to seriously compete with the US tech giants at all levels. Instead, cooperation between the state and industry is needed in order to establish internationally competitive European cloud competitors in the coming years. One such overarching initiative is the Sovereign Cloud Stack (SCS) – an open source-based cloud and container platform that serves as the technical foundation for the European cloud project Gaia-X and is supported by companies such as Telekom, plusserver, noris network, B1 Systems and several others.
You can read the full article in the June 2025 issue of iX magazine.
