The Friedhelm Loh Group is an industry partner to the Gaia-X programme

The automotive industry was the first sector to require its suppliers to make data available throughout the entire supply chain (VW via Amazon Web Services and BMW via Microsoft Azure). This forced suppliers into a tight spot: they were reluctant to risk their supplier status, but eager to retain control over their production data, and therefore their expertise, in their 100,000 factories. “Who owns the data?” is the core issue here – and data sovereignty is poised to become a critical success factor in global competition.

To strengthen the industry and promote solutions to these challenges among European companies, German Minister Peter Altmaier today officially launched the Gaia-X project. The aim is to develop a large number of small, geographically distributed edge data centres with an open cloud connection to facilitate a new class of industrial applications. The project was presented at the Digital Summit hosted by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy in Dortmund.

Data sovereignty, real-time and edge computing

“In its conversations with the Federal Ministry, the Friedhelm Loh Group has helped to drive the Gaia-X project forwards, both as a company and from an industry perspective. Our aim was to prepare the ground and make edge and cloud computing accessible to industry SMEs,” explains Prof. Dr. Friedhelm Loh, owner and CEO of the Friedhelm Loh Group. “From our customers and from our own factories we have learned what matters to SMEs in industry: data sovereignty, real-time capabilities, and links to existing cloud solutions. We have incorporated this expertise into the Gaia-X project.”

Its own experience in developing the digitally integrated plant in Haiger means that Rittal is familiar with the requirements. “When we discovered there was no suitable solution available to meet our requirements, we sat down with the startups German Edge Cloud and IoTOS – the most recent additions to the Friedhelm Loh Group – together with Bosch Connected Industry and devised a solution.” ONCITE is the first turnkey AI-based edge cloud data centre for reliable, real-time processing and analysis of production environment data. “We have created a solution by German industry, for German industry, in collaboration with competent partners such as Fraunhofer, IT and AI specialists and a number of other companies,” says Prof. Dr. Loh.

“Gaia-X must become a success!”

Following the presentation by Anja Karliczek, Federal Minister for Education and Research, and participants from the Industry 4.0 network platform, Prof. Dr. Loh outlined the German SME perspective: “Once we have data sovereignty, real-time and edge computing under control, the introduction of Industry 4.0 among companies can be placed on a completely different footing, with viable value creation chains to make them competitive.” For entrepreneurs, data sovereignty, i.e. decision-making sovereignty within the company and on the Internet, is a key issue. He elucidated: “We are not working against private and public cloud companies; instead, we want to find a way that translates the compatibility of our own approaches with existing cloud solutions into our own decision-making sovereignty.”

Prof. Dr. Loh called on the German government to assist: “Industry needs the support of the state and vice versa.” We’ve talked enough about Gaia-X, he said. “Now we need to make it a reality. We must set an example in German industry. Gaia-X must become a success! We can do it and we will – with everyone’s support.”