Dynamo speaking at Data Sharing Festival in The Hague

The Data Sharing Festival which took place in The Hague February 4-5, 2025, just closed its doors – and if was a great success.

The festival offered an exciting lineup for anyone eager to explore the latest advancements in Data and Cloud Technologies.

The program promised to deliver valuable insights into data sharing, data privacy, cybersecurity, and sovereignty in the rapidly evolving data landscape. It aimed to engage in thought-provoking discussions through inspiring keynotes, dynamic panels, and numerous interactive sessions.

On February 5, starting at 11 AM, you had the opportunity to dive into the session on “Federated Cloud Approaches to Support Autonomous Data Sharing Arrangements,” featuring Francesco Bonfiglio (CEO, Dynamo) and Björn Håkansson (Business Development, TNO).

Francesco engaged the participants with thought-provoking questions. When he asked, “Who believes that a European cloud alternative is needed?”, everyone in the room raised their hand ✌. They all agreed that we are missing a European network of partners and that the problem, in fact, is that European providers are not relevant on the market.

We need to “start from the problem, not from the solution”, Francesco maintained, and the conclusion was that “cloud is to be treated in the same way as critical infrastructure”.

“How many in the room know the difference among different European initiatives to create cloud federations”, was yet another question he challenged the audience with (while very few hands raised), and then he wanted to know how many thought that “these are addressing the real business needs” (general feeling was “not so much”), and last but not least how many thought that the European alternative should coexist with hyperscaler solutions rather than completely substituting them (a majority answered “coexisting”).

Francesco highlighted

• the fact that Dynamo concentrates on the real problem that is being, in fact, a business problem rather than proposing a technology driven solution,
• there was also a wide discussion about the existence of a growing demand from the European businesses for European cloud alternatives, and that this has become more and more evident over the last couple of months, while the offers leave much to be desired,
• that to manage this gap between the existent offer and demand, a cultural change is imperiously needed.
• We highly need collaboration across providers but also with other stakeholders for this paradigm shift to take place.

Dynamo’s mission is to create a One-Stop-Place for all European Cloud Service Providers, to land and expand their business by leveraging on a common pool of shared resources, interoperating in a seamless way, co-operating commercially for the common good, and thus creating a much-needed European Cloud alternative for all users.

Another important moment during the festival was when the “Centre of Excellence for Data Sharing & Cloud” asked Francesco to share his key take-aways of these two days. He laid out that  “we need more of these meetings and discussions to fully understand the value we have in Europe. While we have a wide range of projects, associations, countries, and companies—each with many great ideas—it’s time to come together and work towards a unified solution. This is crucial for data sharing, cloud collaboration, and for harnessing the incredible assets that, unfortunately, are often unknown to many”.
You can watch the video pill here: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/centre-of-excellence-for-data-sharing-cloud_at-the-data-sharing-festival-2025-we-spoke-activity-7298280280727912448-xPH2?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAAAbS4YwB3_GAA5Q8P6sORJy_HyBjPyPFB5Y

The Data Sharing Festival 2025 is a creative partnership between the CoE-DSC, Gaia-X Association for Data and Cloud (AISBL), TNO, Topsector ICT, Basis Data Infrastructuur (BDI), and the Ministry of Economic Affairs. The festival is supported by the International Data Spaces Association (IDSA) and sovity as sponsors.