European Commission stumps up over €1 billion to build native cloud
The European Commission has approved up to €1.2 billion in funding for a Major Project of Common European Interest (IPCEI), which it says will “research, development and first industrial deployment of advanced cloud and edge computing technologies across multiple providers in Europe will support. .”
The news comes as European, British and other antitrust regulators continue to investigate Microsoft and other cloud service providers for their market dominance.
In August 2023, Amazon, Microsoft and Google – all US companies – accounted for around two-thirds of the global cloud market, with little room for European competition to grow.
Europe is helping to finance its own cloud
Seven member states – France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland and Spain – will jointly contribute up to €1.2 billion in taxpayers' money, which could unlock a further €1.4 billion in private investment, according to the European Commission.
The financial support 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 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 first phases of the program will run until 2031. The European Commission expects that this will create a thousand highly qualified jobs, with several thousand more jobs to follow in later phases.
European Commissioner Thierry Breton said: “The IPCEI approved today is crucial to deliver breakthrough innovation in cloud and edge technologies that meet European requirements for interoperability, data privacy, sustainability and cybersecurity.
Breton added: It will also provide the technologies and solutions to achieve our 2030 Digital Decade targets: a 75% of cloud uptake by EU companies and more than 10,000 edge nodes across Europe. With this IPCEI, Europe will strengthen its innovation leadership in next-generation data processing services.”