Strong contributions and a substantive panel discussion characterised the CoE-DSC Strategy Meeting ‘Steering for cloud sovereignty’ on 18 June in The Hague, all grounded in concrete, action-oriented perspectives. Only by connecting public and private parties, and aligning supply and demand, we can achieve federated solutions that give organisations greater control and reduce digital dependence.
Breaking free from hyperscalers
Experts Bert Hubert and Simon Besteman made our dependency on hyperscalers unmistakably clear, offering valuable insights and practical examples of how to break free. Simon presented the case of France, which invested €800 million in a sovereign solution, reducing annual licensing costs from €1.2 billion to €600 million.
A solution closer to home comes from the Open Cloud Alliance (OCA). Lammert Vinke (Info Support) and Ludo Baauw (Intermax Group) explained how OCA brings together Dutch cloud providers to deliver a secure and controllable alternative, built on three ‘O’s: open standards, open architecture and open source.
Peter van Burgel of AMS-IX demonstrated, as the first OCA use case, that this approach is not just an ambition but already practical and capable of delivering results.
Get started
Aik van Eemeren (NDS Cloud) provided an update on the Dutch Digitalisation Strategy (NDS), Roel Peeters (Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy) placed the issue in a European context, and Barbara Kathmann once again proved to be a strong political advocate for digital sovereignty.
The afternoon concluded with a panel discussion featuring several of the earlier speakers, joined by Stephanie Ottenheijm (Digital Holland) and Bjorn Hakansson (CoE-DSC/TNO). Different perspectives converged into a shared sense of urgency. Collaboration, innovation and policy were identified as key drivers of progress. And above all: we simply need to get started. Moderator Peter Verkoulen (CoE-DSC) closed the session with a call to action: ‘The path to digital independence requires collective action, let’s start now.’
As a connecting force, CoE-DSC will of course build on the energy of this meeting, continuing to develop the momentum, ideas and collaborative spirit that emerged.
