Collaboration on Cloud Standards

Kurt Garloff, Marius Feldmann November 27, 2023

Collaboration on Cloud Standards

Sovereign Cloud Stack and ALASCA e.V.: joining forces for good standards

The Sovereign Cloud Stack (SCS) project develops open standards for the provisioning of cloud and container infrastructure together with cloud providers, users and partners. In addition, a complete, completely openly developed and production-ready software implementation is offered together with broad knowledge on how to reliably operate it. Simplifying the operations of modern cloud infrastructure facilitates the emergence of a broad interoperable ecosystem of cloud offerings, supporting users to achieve a higher level of digital sovereignty (or in other words a higher level of self-determinism in the digital space). SCS is a project of the Open Source Business Alliance e.V. (Federation for Digital Sovereignty) and is funded by the BMWK (German Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action). SCS supports the realization of Gaia-X and the German Administrative Cloud (DVC) and provides a technical implementation with a modular Open Source solution.

After announcing the collaboration between SCS and ALASCA e.V. already in January 2023 in a joint statement a lot of joint work has happened throughout the last months especially in the area of SCS standardization.

Starting today, the Special Interest Group for the standardization activities of SCS will be governed by both the ALASCA project and the SCS project team and coordintated by Dr. Matthias Büchse from Cloud&Heat Technologies. Building on top of already existing standards, the goal is to achieve a broader adoption of SCS standards by more close collaboration with ALASCA and also cover the ALASCA technology stack with the cloud-lifecycle management tool Yaook. Providing a second standards-compliant implementation of SCS standards on top of Yaook validates the universal nature of the standards. The broader setup also supports the high quality of the evolving standards and the sustainability of the SCS standardization efforts. The Special Interest Group is open to all cloud providers and integrators that want to contribute and provide SCS-compliant services.

Likewise for ALASCA, the closer collaboration in the evolution of the standards offers significant value: The association pursues enabling the digitally sovereign setup and operations of own cloud infrastructure by research, educational or generally public entities as well as private sector companies and individuals based on Open Source Software and the connected supply of competencies. With the SCS standards, this effort receives a unique foundation, upgrading the relevance of the ALASCA-driven Open Source Software. The ALASCA community significantly benefits from the additional support by the SCS community.

About the authors

Kurt Garloff

CTO Sovereign Cloud Stack @ Open Source Business Alliance

While working on Physics as student and researcher in Dortmund, Wuppertal and Eindhoven, Kurt started to work with and on Linux, with first patches to the SCSI layer in the mid 90s. He has spent his post-university life in Open Source, as kernel engineer, leader of SUSE Labs (kernel, compiler, X11, security), and engineering and business leadership at SUSE. Since 2011 he has been working on Open Source cloud software, at Deutsche Telekom, as Freelancer, at T-Systems (as chief architect for the OTC) and also has been serving on the Open Infra Foundation's board. Since 2019 he has been pushing the Sovereign Cloud Stack idea which resulted in a publically funded project that he now technically leads. He still loves to occasionally write code (mostly python these days) or at least test out code from the colleagues and project. He spends his free time with his family or with running and playing table tennis.

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Marius Feldmann

Chief Operating Officer @ Cloud&Heat Technologies

Marius Feldmann is COO of Cloud&Heat Technologies and in this role is responsible for the technological development of the Cloud&Heat software stack, for the operation of the cloud infrastructure and for strategic business development and market orientation. In this context, he has anchored Cloud&Heat Technologies in several strategically important partnerships and initiatives. Particularly noteworthy are the initiation of Yaook, an open-source cloud lifecycle management system, together with Schwarz IT, his involvement in Gaia-X since the start of the initiative and his role as a board member of ALASCA - the Association for Operable, Open Cloud Infrastructures.

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