In May 2022, Atos and VMware announced the development of “data spaces”— relationships that allow more data to be exchanged between organizations and industries. Data spaces encourage the Gaia-X initiative, a European-based project to create a secure data infrastructure.

An introduction to Gaia-X

“The key standards developed by GAIA-X are based on combined infrastructure standards and core services: federation, identity and access, and marketplace,” says Frédéric Malicki, Southern Europe chief technology officer at Atos, to engineering.com. “The VMware and Atos joint partnership can deploy a full end-to-end ecosystem of services and data, where any data from source generation, processing, transferring, analyzing and outcome delivery will travel and converge from single information (from) a data lake (a central repository of information) to a data space. [A data space will have] ... a proper fairness and transparency, interoperability and data protection. [It will] avoid external discrepancies and focus on the value of any data which will be part of the data space in any particular use case.”

Image courtesy of Atos.

The partnership between Atos and VMware highlights the capabilities of each company. VMware, a California-based provider of multicloud services, is providing multicloud and app modernization within the Atos cloud. Atos, a France-based digital security company, is providing cybersecurity expertise and technology integration.

How Data Spaces Are Set Up

A data space constitutes an exchange between one or more trusted partners, each of which applies the same high standards and rules to the storage and sharing of data. A partner to a data space stores data at the source rather than in a central location. Partners exchange data when necessary.

Within Gaia-X, data in data spaces are held exclusively by the 340+ members of the Gaia-X European Association for Data and Cloud (Association Internationale Sans But Lucratif [AISBL]). Entities from Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Spain, the UK and the U.S. are on the list. Members include companies with a provider or user background of data infrastructures, IT startups, research institutions and business associations. Atos, Siemens and SAP are among the founding members.

“Data spaces can be nested and overlapping, so a data provider can participate in several data spaces at once,” says Malicki. “Data sovereignty (the concept that data are subject to the laws and governance structures of the nation where they are collected) and trust are essential for the working of data spaces and the relationships between participants.”

Data spaces differ from other multicloud tools in that they are under the auspices of the individual entities that create them. They are not set up by a third party with its own fees, regulations and standards. Each data space is an individual platform that follows a common standard set by Gaia-X.

The relationships among Gaia-X members establishes a networked system. The organization’s broader goal is to link cloud service providers through three avenues: the association, national Gaia-X hubs, central contact points for entities in each country contributing to the Gaia-X project and the global Gaia-X community—which invites individuals and companies outside of Europe to join through hackathons, conferences and podcasts.

One of VMware’s services that helps to create data spaces, and helps customers to build apps and modernize legacy platforms, is Tanzu Labs. One of Atos’ tools to create data spaces is its edge and bare metal solutions. These solutions provide connectivity, software updates and functionality at sites where data are generated, like the factory floor.

Getting More Security for Data

Data spaces allow engineers and other professionals to extract more value from data by securely sharing information. For example, medical professionals may use a data space to exchange information on predictive medicine, genomics and rare diseases. The storage capabilities of data spaces allow for image archiving, facilitating the transfer and categorization of documents such as photos of MRI scans. The merger of health data may accelerate research and clinical trials.

Though these spaces are designed to share data, access must be limited. With many companies now utilizing multiple cloud systems, hackers look for weak links in data security. To learn how to better protect these spaces, read: Cybercriminals Love the Multicloud; So How Can We Make It Safer?

Atos has also developed many tools to improve data security. These end-to-end cybersecurity solutions for different clients have honed its experience in the field. Examples of these cybersecurity tools include:

AIssac, an AI-powered software as a service (SaaS) to secure operations
Evidian, an identity and access management program to restrict access to systems
IDnomic, public key infrastructure (PKI) software to encrypt the digital identities of people, machines and objects for IT infrastructures
Trustway, a data encryption program for hardware and networks

Atos’ long-standing partnership with VMware is another factor that has motivated investment in data spaces.

“The European Commission (the cabinet government of the European Union) plans to invest up to €2 billion [$2.1 billion] to trigger €4-6 billion [$4.2-6.3 billion] (to flow) into a “high impact project” on European data spaces,” says Malicki. “The technology we’ve developed is aligned with Gaia-X reference architecture. [It’s] flexible to be adapted to other variants of data space architecture such as Catena-X [a collaborative data system for the automotive industry].”

Other Applications of Data Spaces

Professionals in the energy sector can use data spaces to manage the transition toward carbon neutrality. One of Atos’ goals is decarbonization. The company hopes to use the platform to encourage energy efficiency and sector coupling, the powering of heating, transport and industry with renewable energy. A data space could potentially be used to share information and optimize electric networks for charging electric vehicles. Atos is also excited about the possibility of allowing utilities to become more flexible.

Professionals in all sectors also benefit from how data spaces can handle changes caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The start of the pandemic was accompanied by a sudden jump in the demand for data and digital services. There was a corresponding rise in the value of data outcomes for marketplace digital services, meaning data that measure the results of these programs.

“The ease of digital ways of working, the increased accessibility of digital services, and new phenomena such as ‘Zoom weddings/birthdays/drinks’ are here to stay,” says Malicki. “The seamless blending of your physical world and your digital world — your digital twin, you may say — is the new hybrid society of tomorrow.”

As every sector, from tech to academia, continues to be affected by current events, entities are still attempting to gauge what purposes data spaces can serve. Businesses, governments and citizens are trying to achieve the right balance between physical spaces like offices and digital spaces such as video conferences. Malicki says cloud services that are better, faster and cheaper are key to building more data spaces. Structuring data spaces differently so that they operate in accordance with national governments, stay fully secure, and remain fully trusted is also necessary.