European Commission stumps up over €1 billion to build native cloud

8 December 2023, 14:23 published

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The European Commission has approved up to €1.2 billion in funding for an Important Project of Common European Interest (IPCEI), which it says will, “support research, development and first industrial deployment of advanced cloud and edge computing technologies across multiple providers in Europe.”

The news comes as European, British, and other antitrust regulators continue to investigate Microsoft and other cloud service providers over their market dominance.

In August 2023, Amazon, Microsoft, and Google – all US companies – accounted for around two-thirds of the cloud market globally, little very little room for European competition to grow.

Europe is helping to fund its own cloud

Seven member states – France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, and Spain – will collectively contribute up to €1.2 billion of taxpayers’ money, which the European Commission expects could unlock a further €1.4 billion in private investments.

Financial aid will be shared with a total of 19 countries: three from Germany (Deutsche Telekon, SAP, and Siemens), three from Spain (Telefónica España, OpenNebula Systems, and Arsys Internet), two from France (Atos and Orange), five from Italy (Reply, TIM, Tiscali Italia, Fincantieri, and Engineering Ingegneria Informatica), three from Poland (Oktawave, Atende Industries, and CloudFerro), two from Hungary (4iG and E-Group ICT Software), and one from The Netherlands (Leadseweb Global).

Research, development, and the program’s first stages will run until 2031, and the European Commission expects 1,000 highly qualified jobs to be created as a result, with several thousand more roles to follow in the later stages.

European Commissioner Thierry Breton said: “The IPCEI approved today is crucial to deliver breakthrough innovation on Cloud and Edge technologies that fulfil European requirements for interoperability, data privacy, sustainability and cybersecurity.

Breton added: It will also provide the technologies and solutions to reach our Digital Decade Strategy 2030 objectives: a 75% of cloud uptake by EU enterprises and more than 10.000 edge nodes across Europe. With this IPCEI, Europe will reinforce its innovation leadership in next generation data processing services.”