Europe has discovered in recent years that it has the obligation to consolidate its own digital and technological sovereignty. For years, numerous organizations, both in the public and private sectors, have supported their critical infrastructures on technologies and services developed outside the borders of the European continent. Faced with this reality, attempts are beginning to change the paradigm.
To analyze the current situation and reality of both companies and public organizations, OpenNebula held the event “Building the European Infrastructure for Cloud and AI Factories” in Madrid. Its main objective was to explore how to prepare European organizations for a new technological scenario by promoting and adopting platforms that are truly open, interoperable and, above all, European.
To understand the magnitude of what was presented at the event, it is vital to understand the current evolution of technological sovereignty. The meeting underlined a fundamental premise that will guide the future of the sector: today it is no longer enough to guarantee that data is physically hosted on European territory. It is also not enough to resort exclusively to open source software solutions. Almost, what matters most is who develops, who controls and who operates the software that manages these infrastructures.
The strategic dependence on external suppliers in key areas such as cloud computing and Artificial Intelligence poses a potential risk both for the economic competitiveness of companies and for the security of the European Union.
The New European Framework and the CADA Initiative
One of the high points of the day revolved around the new sovereignty and regulatory requirements that are being developed at the institutional level. In this sense, the participation of key figures such as Ana Juan Ferrer, Program Officer at the European Commission, stood out, who shared with attendees crucial details about the new CADA framework and its practical implications. Likewise, the event had the vision of representatives of the public administration, such as Leandro Higueruela, from the Ministry for Digital Transformation and the Public Service of Spain.
Both provided a perspective on what public policies should be designed to protect European interests, discussing what could change in the regulatory landscape in the short term and how companies should anticipate to meet future sovereignty demands.
The core of the technical debate was led by the hosts of the day. Ignacio M. Llorente, Managing Director of Business Development at OpenNebula Systems, who explained in detail the concept of “AI Factories” (Artificial Intelligence Factories) and “Enterprise Clouds”. These platforms are not simply conventional data centers, but highly optimized environments to handle the demanding workloads that modern Artificial Intelligence requires.
The Spanish Stack for Sovereign Artificial Intelligence
If Europe aspires to compete in the global AI race, it needs to master all layers of the technology: from the hardware and processors to the software that trains the algorithms. In this context, one of the most notable panels of the event focused on the construction of the Spanish stack (the technological stack) for a sovereign AI.
The panel brought together a selection of experts such as Julita Corbalán, Technology Director at Energy Aware Runtime (EAR); Alejandro Barredo, Head of Strategic Technical Accounts at Multiverse Computing and José Manuel Leceta, VP of Public Policies at Semidynamics who analyzed the real challenges that organizations face. Through practical use cases, they highlighted the urgency of efficiently combining accelerated computing, storage, networking, software and AI models into a unified and commercially attractive platform.
The panel “Building the Sovereign Cloud and AI Ecosystem” highlighted that technological independence requires strong strategic alliances. Moderated by Manuel Navarro, director of Byte TI; Cristina Tello, Director of Public Sector Sales, Fsas Technologies; Manel Picalló, Technical Director of NetApp and Roberto Lázaro, Sales Director of SUSE analyzed how integrated collaboration between platforms, infrastructure providers and open technologies accelerates the creation of fully sovereign digital networks in Europe. It was highlighted that unifying these solutions is vital to offer solid and competitive alternatives in the global market.
For its part, the panel “Digital sovereignty in practice” brought this theoretical vision to operational reality. Ángel L. Rodríguez, Head of the Technological Architecture Area of the CSIC, Idoia De la Iglesia, Head of the Intelligence of Things Specialization Team of IKERLAN, Mondragón Corporation and Antonio Fuentes, Deputy Director of Systems and Cybersecurity of RedIRIS shared their direct experience in the implementation of these models. During the session, they presented real-world use cases, detailed their technical priorities, and discussed the daily challenges institutions face when adopting sovereign cloud and AI infrastructures.
The debates held showed that the technical, industrial and institutional capacity exists to reverse the strong foreign technological dependence suffered by the continent.
