Keynote: Building a Sovereign, Multi-Cloud Strategy with Cloud Native Technolog... Goetz Reinhaeckel

This talk explores the Bundeswehr's multi-cloud strategy and its approach to achieving digital sovereignty through open source solutions. The speaker, representing BWI, an IT service provider for the German armed forces, outlines the challenges faced in standardization, automation, and collaboration within a defense context. They emphasize the need to address IT security regulations and the integration of services across various cloud environments, including fog and edge computing. The discussion highlights the importance of modularity and interoperability in implementing flexible cloud-based systems that can adapt to diverse use cases. By joining the Nionifos initiative, BWI aims to leverage open source technologies to foster collaboration within the defense sector and enhance their IT capabilities.

Good morning. Um, I would like to share some insights about Bundeswehr multi-cloud um story and how to advance sovereignty. Um, BWI is an IT service provider uh government-owned and um we are the partner the prime prime partner for the digitalization of the German armed forces and we are providing different kinds of IT services from data center networks, server storage, but also private cloud. That's something I would

like to talk about a little bit more. Um, we as an IT service provider do face challenges that most of you know. So, on the left-hand side you see the typical ones going into um how to improve standardization, how to increase the level of automation, how to get integrated and harmonized systems, but also the cultural um challenges we are facing like uh most of you um how

to improve the way we collaborate and um also for us it's a fight for talents. But on the other side, we as we are in the defense arena uh looking much more into some uh additional challenges which are on the right-hand side here. So, it's a very much about IT security regulations we need to fulfill, but it's also about different kind of how to deploy uh cloud

services. It's not only within our main data centers, but it's also uh to the fog and edge far edge scenarios. So, to provide IT service uh services in different So, um on and uh last but not least, it's also very much how to collaborate with our partners. We are fully integrated into NATO, so you can imagine that we always need to take that into account. Um, so

how do we want to address and tackle these uh challenges? We believe that open source is for us a key element of our strategy um because we need to um focus on three main goals. Uh one is sovereignty. Um, so we need the freedom of action. We want to get rid of dependencies that we currently see uh technology-wise, but also commercial-wise. Uh second, it's about modularity. We

need to improve modularity. So, it's not the on-prem very monolithic system that we are looking for. We need to have cloud-based flexible systems. We need to adapt especially in our arena, so be as flexible as possible. And uh interoperability as I mentioned before is uh of main importance for us due to the fact that we have strong partners in uh critical situations uh not only NATO, but

also on EU level where we need to integrate more and Um, so open source is for us a key and that's also why we joined Nionifos um very shortly um and we are prime member now and um I think we are um on the right way to really get integrated into this uh ecosystem and to see the benefits out of that. And this leads me to the

last slide which um shows the multi-cloud uh strategy uh where we rely on different technologies depending on the use cases. So, we do not have just one scenario, one use case. Uh that's why we are also um uh implementing and integrating different uh technologies. You see on the right-hand side um the open source base open defense cloud uh where we want to provide services not only in

our main data centers, but also to fog and edge as I mentioned before. So, this is key for the defense uh arena and uh we are fully committed and looking forward to get support from the open source community and also be part of that community. And having said that, I thank you very much and uh hand over to the next speaker. Thank you. >> [applause]