Sovereign Cloud Stack and ALASCA e.V. – working together for good standards
The Sovereign Cloud Stack (SCS) project is working with a community of cloud providers, users and partners to develop open standards for the provision of cloud and container infrastructure. This is offered as a fully open-source, production-ready software implementation and supplemented with a broad knowledge base for reliable operation. The simplified operation of state-of-the-art cloud infrastructure is intended to create a broad, interoperable ecosystem of offerings that makes it easier for users to achieve greater digital sovereignty — in other words, greater self-determination in the digital realm. SCS is a project of the OSB Alliance – Bundesverband für digitale Souveränität e.V. (Federal Association for Digital Sovereignty) and is funded by the BMWK (Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection). SCS also contributes to the realisation of Gaia-X and the German Administration Cloud (DVC) and technically implements the framework conditions developed there as a modular open-source solution in the reference implementation.
After SCS and ALASCA e.V. had already announced their intention to strengthen their future cooperation in a joint declaration of intent at the beginning of 2023, collaboration had announced, there has been intensive cooperation in the area of SCS standardisation in recent months.
The Special Interest Group for SCS standardisation activities will in future be jointly managed by ALASCA and the SCS project team and coordinated by Dr Matthias Büchse from Cloud&Heat Technologies. Closer cooperation with ALASCA and building on the standards already developed should ensure that the SCS standards are more widely adopted and integrated into the ALASCA technology stack, in particular the cloud lifecycle management tool Yaook. The provision of a second standard-compliant implementation based on Yaook will further consolidate the universal validity of the SCS standards for open cloud infrastructures. This broader positioning is important for the quality of the standards' further development and also ensures the long-term continuity of SCS standardisation activities. The Special Interest Group is open to all cloud providers and integrators who offer SCS-compliant services on the market and wish to contribute to the standards.
For ALASCA, closer cooperation in the further development of standards also offers significant added value. As an association, ALASCA aims to enable research, educational and general public institutions, private companies and individuals to set up and operate their own digitally sovereign cloud infrastructures on the basis of open source software and the associated transfer of expertise. The SCS standards provide a unique foundation for this endeavour, enhancing the open-source software promoted by ALASCA. In addition, this step significantly strengthens the ALASCA community through additional support from the SCS community.
