15 June 2021

Harald A. Summa elected to the Gaia-X Board of Directors

  • Summa one of 24 new Gaia-X AISBL Board Members
  • DE-CIX as a blueprint for other Internet Exchange operators

Frankfurt am Main, 15 June 2021: Harald A. Summa, CEO of DE-CIX, the operator of the world’s leading Internet Exchange in Frankfurt am Main, was one of 24 people elected to the Gaia-X European Association for Data and Cloud AISBL Board during the organization’s first general assembly on 7 June. The appointment is for a period of two years. Gaia-X member companies elected the board members and two independent members on the basis of 64 applications –  in a virtual format due to the pandemic.

“When I first heard about the idea of Gaia-X, I knew that something great was being created here for Europe – and also beyond Europe’s borders. By getting involved in Gaia-X, we at DE-CIX are helping to develop this forward-looking initiative further and provide participating companies with sovereignty and control over their data. I am very pleased about the position on the Board of Directors and the trust being placed in me”, Harald A. Summa, CEO of DE-CIX and Member of the Board of Gaia-X AISBL.

DE-CIX as a blueprint for other Internet Exchange operators

DE-CIX acts as a blueprint within the European cloud infrastructure project Gaia-X for other Internet Exchanges and interconnection providers for how they can provide the necessary interconnection services to realize the innovative vision of distributed data spaces. DE-CIX operates close to 30 carrier and data center-neutral Internet Exchanges worldwide, with a strong focus on Europe, and has long been a global thought leader in enterprise interconnection ecosystems. Gaia-X aims to create digital ecosystems: a secure, interconnected, and federated data infrastructure that meets the highest security and latency requirements – for DE-CIX, this is the vision at the heart of the Gaia-X project.

DE-CIX is currently making, among others, the following contributions to Gaia-X:

  • Management of the Working Package Interconnection and Network
  • Member of the Technical Steering Committee
  • Collaboration in the Working Group Architecture
  • Collaboration in the Working Group Provider
  • Development of an OpenSource IX-API
  • Development and realization of concepts for the establishment of Closed User Groups