Eight European tech companies are teaming up to launch an independent Edge cloud platform in Europe.
Eight European tech companies are joining forces to develop an independent Edge cloud platform: Virt8ra. Companies in Croatia, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Slovenia and Spain will work together to develop the Edge cloud platform.
EU vs. US
The platform is part of the Important Project of Common European Interest on Next Generation Cloud Infrastructure and Service (IPCEI-CIS). Virt8ra currently offers virtual machines and Kubernetes clusters. Applications can be easily added, run and transferred across different locations and cloud providers.
“Virt8ra is the first step toward meta-orchestration software for multi-vendor solutions in Europe. Over time, this platform strengthens digital sovereignty and competitiveness within our continent,” said Miguel Martínez Vélez, Chief Product Officer at Arsys. Arsys one of eight tech companies, together they provide IT infrastructure to run the platform.
However, this is not the first attempt to get such a cloud project off the ground. The Gaia-X project in 2021 showed how difficult it is to compete against American cloud giants such as AWS, Microsoft Azure or Google Cloud. Where that platform focused on formulating European cloud rules, Virt8ra goes further by creating an effective platform.
Competition with the U.S. is not likely to diminish. Still, this is a first step for the EU to further develop the overall cloud sector in Europe.