ALASCA FOCIS
FOCIS - Free and Open Cloud Initiative Saxony
This measure is co-financed with tax revenue on the basis of the budget approved by the Saxon state parliament.
Why?
The cloud market is currently dominated by a few large companies outside of Europe (hyperscalers). The associated dependencies of European cloud users on foreign providers may lead to security concerns, challenges within compliance and a lack of data sovereignty.
While small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Europe are generally able to address these problems and focus on dedicated services , they do not compare to the wide range and reach of hyperscalers and are unable to keep up with the competition, which severely limits their position in the cloud market.
As a result, Saxony, and Europe on a broader scale, are facing the challenge of reducing dependencies from non-European countries and cloud providers and enabling smaller cloud providers with specialised offers to become competitive within the cloud market .
Our strategy
With our project ALASCA FOCIS we are making a significant contribution to changing the current situation by using open source technologies in combination with the SCS cloud standards and therefor building a solid foundation for real interoperability and portability between different cloud providers.
Small and medium-sized cloud providers are generally unable to compete with the variety of services and offerings of non-European hyperscalers. As a result they specialise in dedicated services, which makes it all the more important for cloud customers and their requirements to be able to obtain suitable services from different providers. It should also be possible to migrate the infrastructure to another cloud provider at any time. We face these challenges by using open source technologies and integrating open cloud standards. This is how we aim to support companies and organisations to build open and transparent cloud infrastructures .
Our contribution
- Open source technology: With FOCIS, we are continuously working on the further development and optimisation of our operational ALASCA projects.
- SCS cloud standards: We participate in the project Sovereign Cloud Stack. This is how we develop open cloud standards in a targeted manner with the involvement of relevant stakeholders.
- Piloting of the ALASCA technology stack: We are testing and improving our technology stack with the involvement of Saxon cloud providers, cloud users and public institutions.
- Documentation: We attach great importance to user-friendly documentation for the development, installation and operation of the software. In this way, we aim to facilitate the use of and collaboration on ALASCA projects and standards.
- Networking and knowledge exchange: We plan to promote the exchange of knowledge with the ALASCA community and other players in the European open source landscape in order to create synergies and increase the visibility of open technologies.
With the funding received from the Saxon State Ministry of Economic Affairs, Labour and Transport (SMWA), provided by the SAB, we plan to drive forward the further development, piloting and dissemination of open source software and standards for cloud services within the Saxon ecosystem.
"Without the open source community, many of the things we use every day in our dealings with computers or the internet would not exist. The development of open source standards and solutions strengthens the independence of our citizens and our economy and helps our companies to ensure secure and reliable access to their data and to be able to utilise new technologies. This is why the Free State of Saxony is supporting the economy and the open source community with funding for further development."
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The full press release can be found here:
Project team
Project management FOCIS
Dr Matthias Büchse
Communication and Documentation Specialist
Helena Ott
Sounds exciting? Support us as a software developer!
Full-time software developer for cloud software development project
As a software developer, you are responsible for carrying out the technical work in the project, particularly the development of ALASCA's open-source projects, the SCS standards, as well as the piloting and validation activities.
