What are International Data Spaces?
"Data is the new oil" is a quote from an article that appeared in the Economist in 2017. It seems hackneyed, but is now more relevant than ever: we have discovered the new oil of the 21st century: Data spaces.
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IT technicians understand data spaces as a decentralized ecosystem for the exchange of data. The data does not have to be uploaded to an additional location, such as another cloud, but remains with the participating organizations. The data space is therefore virtual. Participants exchange data directly; the data stores only need to be connected to the Internet. The data space organizes the exchange. It is a telephone book, an exchange and a yellow page all at the same time. This is because information can also be traded in data spaces, just like in a marketplace. Data spaces also contain applications that process data.
No, data spaces only work if exchanging, marketplaces and apps are accessed centrally via the Internet - as with the cloud. With cloud computing, applications and data are in one place. Data spaces separate applications from data. The applications are located centrally in the cloud, the data decentrally with the participants.
In data spaces, owners of data retain sovereignty over their data. If company A wants to use company B's data, B grants access rights for a specific period of time and for a specific purpose: Read, copy, write? That's up to the data owner to decide. Value-added stages emerge from raw data to refined data. Data spaces are the springboard for the industrialization of data.
The data is always as secure as it is protected at the participating company. A data space can additionally encrypt the communication. The information in a data space is already more secure per se, because a hacker would have to break into the data stores of several companies to get to all the data for a product. In the case of a car, for example, several thousand suppliers are involved.
The German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection is funding projects on data spaces as part of Gaia-X. The International Data Spaces Association provides the framework for these projects. The IDSA has defined five roles: Connector, Broker, Clearing House, Identity Provider and App Store.
In November 2022, Gaia-X certified the Telekom subsidiary T-Systems as the first "Gaia-X Digital Clearing House". In the future, T-Systems will verify the legitimacy of participants when they first log on to data spaces that are compliant with Gaia-X. T-Systems thus assumes the role of identity provider.
In 2019, France and Germany launched the Gaia-X initiative. With Gaia-X, institutions are to merge and share data securely and confidently. This is how data silos are avoided. And this is how innovation can emerge. On the German side, the founding members include Beckhoff Automation, BMW, Robert Bosch, DE-CIX, Deutsche Telekom, German Edge Cloud, PlusServer, SAP and Siemens. In addition, the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, the International Data Spaces Association and the European cloud provider association Cispe are co-founders of GAIA-X.
