The Sovereign Cloud Stack (SCS) is defined in the German stack as a standard to be complied with in the area of managed services and cloud. This marks an important milestone for open and sovereign cloud infrastructures in Germany. At the same time, it confirms the relevance of the SCS standards as a viable basis for the technological target framework of the German stack.

As part of the consultation process for the German stack, the Sovereign Cloud Stack Standards Forum of the Open Source Business Alliance e.V. has published a Submission in order to position the role of the Sovereign Cloud Stack (SCS) as a binding standard in the future technology and standard framework of the German stack.

The guiding principle of the German stack addresses key principles such as sovereignty, interoperability and European connectivity. This objective is directly in line with the Sovereign Cloud Stack approach, which is geared towards open, standardised and certifiable cloud infrastructures and thus creates a sustainable basis for digitally sovereign infrastructures.

What does SCS offer the German stack?

SCS puts digital sovereignty into practice by combining open standards, open source implementations and transparent operating practices. SCS thus offers a sustainable and tried-and-tested basis for building modern cloud infrastructures in the context of the German stack.

The SCS standards put digital sovereignty into practice. They create the technical and organisational prerequisites for effectively and sustainably realising objectives such as sovereignty, interoperability and European connectivity.

Specifically, the SCS standards make a significant contribution by

• simplify the provision of secure, interoperable and high-quality cloud services,
• Reduce dependencies on proprietary solutions and make it easier to switch providers,
• promote collaboration in an open cloud ecosystem.

Last but not least, the SCS standards promote the development of a sustainable cloud ecosystem in which innovation, competition and collaboration are strengthened in equal measure. They therefore make a significant contribution to establishing the German stack not only strategically, but also operationally as a future-proof foundation for sovereign digital infrastructures.

Official naming of the Sovereign Cloud Stack in the Germany stack

Particularly pleasing:
In the revised version of the Germany Stack, the Sovereign Cloud Stack is explicitly recognised as a standard to be complied with in the area of Managed services and cloud called - besides the Standards of the German Administration Cloud (DVC) and OpenStack.

For cloud services, it is stipulated, among other things, that:

• virtualised and scalable compute, storage and communication services,
• basic operational services such as logging, monitoring and backup are taken into account,
• standards from SCS must be complied with,
• clear categories for operational framework conditions such as scalability, availability and protection requirements.

This explicit naming of the Sovereign Cloud Stack is a strong signal and an important success of our joint work in the SCS community. This offers a good opportunity to further develop the various standards, which we believe are complementary to each other, together.

What's next? Participate now!

The Germany stack is still being finalised. In addition to being discussed in the responsible committees, a Second round of consultation: 16 January to 15 February 2026.

During this period, comments can be submitted via the feedback form. Feedback on the following questions is particularly welcome:

• Are there pragmatic implementation conditions that need to be added?

• Are the prioritised technology fields underpinned by the relevant technologies and standards for the German stack?

• Does the alignment of the standards and technologies match the strategic objectives?

Our call

Get involved in the second round of consultation and strengthen the Sovereign Cloud Stack as a future-proof standard basis for the German stack. Your feedback is crucial to ensure that open, sovereign and interoperable cloud standards are permanently anchored in the final target image.