Europeans are not good at IT. There is a danger that American and Chinese IT giants will collect the info from the internet of things in Europe for free and use it to make good for themselves. Europeans are coming with an idea how to get paid for the info.
"The EU Data Act gave the starting signal for the European data economy on January 11th of this year. The EU hopes to see a GDP increase of 270 billion euros by 2028 and expects many new jobs related to (non-personal) data in the member states.
The beginning has been made, and when the transition period of the EU Data Act is over on September 12th, 2025, data rooms could become the most important IT components of the second half of digitization. There is still time to prepare and get a piece of the pie. If we actually succeed in keeping the hyperscalers out of the game, we will have a blank sheet of paper in front of us that can be written with the names of completely new companies.
On this basis, the EU wants to strengthen Europe's position as an independent player in the global data economy. The Data Act and Digital Markets Act regulate this together. This is where it gets exciting. We will see how successful this idea is. But if everything goes as planned, we can certainly speak of a quantum leap for European industry in terms of digitalization.
An important building block of the data economy is the so-called "data space", an invention of the Fraunhofer Society, the "new MP3" so to speak. As a reminder: the MP3 format is also based on an invention by Fraunhofer. The data space has already received great international recognition and has the potential to revolutionize IT. Because it enables completely new architectures, roles and business models.
Who owns the data space?
When a Fraunhofer expert was asked two years ago: "Who owns the data space?" and by that he meant a local "data space" in a production facility filled with machine data, the answer was: "Who owns the Internet?" Today we know that the data space is figuratively speaking a kind of data universe, peppered with data pools.
You can also speak of a new Internet layer. If you look up at the starry sky in the evening, every star could be such a data pool, and constellations consisting of several stars are then joint data space projects, such as Manufacturing-X or Catena-X. This is then called a "federation".
The constellation comparison has one problem, however. Because in the data economy it will be possible to access all data pools from anywhere, i.e. across sectors. In a figurative sense, someone from the constellation Ursa Minor could potentially access data pools in the constellation Orion. Whether this is in my interest for someone as the rights holder of a data pool in the constellation Orion or not is something I can decide and configure using the Dataspace Connector, another important component in the data economy.
A quantum leap?
But what do these comparisons have to do with a quantum leap in IT? Two things are particularly worth highlighting here:
The interface problem in the IT world is made easier, which above all reduces costs and increases efficiency.
Data can become tradable assets and thus generate sales in a market that is completely new (and free of hyperscalers).
Let's look at point 1. Interfaces between software applications or between machines and applications in the IT world have existed for many decades. In order for data to be exchanged at all, mediator software was needed between the data provider and the data recipient. This was previously coordinated and programmed by representatives from both sides in interface discussions.
This often took a certain amount of time, because it was necessary to discuss in detail which data formats, protocols, paths, security measures and the like should be used. Then an interface program was developed on the data provider side that sent data to the receiving software, and on the receiving side there was an interface program that received the data and converted and integrated it into its own data world. This could take several months, and then the interface program also had to be thoroughly tested.
This interface problem was also a reason why specialized companies were able to emerge whose know-how lies in mastering a wide variety of interfaces. For example, there are industry applications that know the interfaces to certain machines inside and out and that transfer data transported via interfaces to their own proprietary application. This knowledge has secured such software companies almost monopolistic market positions to this day.
Completely new processes are emerging
The data room is now changing this procedure in a very lasting way. There is no longer any need for a data provider with whom an interface must be agreed. All data is available in the data room (i.e. in the “data pot" or "data star", as described above), which is located directly on the machine, for example, but can alternatively be located on a local edge server or in the cloud. All data is sufficiently semantically described, its formats are transparent, and all rules for access and exchange are stored. From a purely technical point of view, the data can also be transferred from A to B at any time; no further preparatory work is required.
However, the data owner can use the connector to regulate who receives the data, what the recipient can do with it, and what they (perhaps) have to pay for it. Everything is handled automatically and digitally.
This makes it clear that data exchange will be much easier and more efficient than before. Data can also be sent from the data provider to a large number of recipient systems at the same time without the need for time-consuming prior coordination. If you now remember the Data Act and its requirement that all manufacturers of networkable machines and devices must make the data that arises during their use available to the user, manufacturers of industry software should think about this in the sense described above. Your strategic advantage of having a deep knowledge of specific machine interfaces is in danger of more or less evaporating. In the future, such data will mostly be located in data rooms and will be completely transparent. Anyone could use it and build their own applications with it. In-depth knowledge of machine interfaces will then no longer necessarily be a competitive advantage.
Transparency along production
For production in the future, this means that sooner or later most machines in a factory will make data available using data rooms. Until now, data in such abundance and detail was not available at all. It is easy to imagine that such volumes of data will create significantly greater transparency along the production chain and that adjustments to increase efficiency that are not known today will be found. Many a production manager will be happy just to see all the data from all machines on a central dashboard instead of having to keep an eye on ten screens.
The second point is still a little further away. Turning data into tradable assets is a promising vision. It is driven by the EU Data Act, which will ensure that the amount of available data will explode. The first functioning data marketplaces already exist, such as agdatahub in France. And machine users who, according to the Data Act, have the right to exploit the data from the machines they use, are already being courted by various players with the offer of support in marketing the data.
Nevertheless, there still seems to be a lack of imagination. This is evident, for example, in the European Register of Data Intermediation Services, a public register of all providers of data intermediation services who offer their services in the European Union. So far, there are only seven entries here, from four French, two Finnish and one Hungarian companies. There are no German companies to be found. (No Lithuanians either. They are hiding in the bushes. (K.))
Anyone who thinks that the data economy will not get off the ground in view of these facts is wrong. On the contrary, the Data Space Radar of the International Data Spaces Association based in Dortmund already shows 178 data space projects in 28 different sectors. Leading the way are data room projects in the field of production or Industry 4.0.
42 data room projects
An overview we created ourselves, focusing on Germany, selects 42 data room projects in which around 600 companies and organizations are involved. Various Fraunhofer Institutes are most frequently involved, but also companies such as SAP, Siemens, T-Systems, Schneider Electric, Software AG, Airbus, BASF, BMW and European associations such as the VDMA.
The VDMA in particular has made decisive progress in this new world of machines and production facilities and, alongside the Fraunhofer Society, is active in most of the registered data room projects. Last but not least, specialized start-ups such as deltaDAO from Hamburg, Sovity from Dortmund or Dawex from Lyon, which have extensive technical knowledge and exciting ideas for business models, often appear. They could become the data unicorns of the data economy." [1]
1. Ein Quantensprung für Europas Datenökonomie. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (online) Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung GmbH. Jul 29, 2024.
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