Atos and VMware, Inc. announced an extension of the companies' strategic partnership by working to deliver an integrated set of capabilities to help speed up the development of "Data Spaces". Data Spaces are platforms that allow for greater exchange, collaboration, and monetization of data between organizations or industries, independently of the underlying infrastructure, whilst enabling data sovereignty and interoperability.

With the VMware and Atos collaboration effort on Data Space development, the companies plan to deliver an integrated set of capabilities that help enable data and industry applications to be used and shared more strategically to boost national and regional digital economies. The expanded collaboration will deliver capabilities aligned to the Gaia-X architecture and serve as a key enabler and booster of the Gaia-X initiative, which seeks to accelerate the exchange of data through new digital platforms that comply with common rules.

Atos and VMware plan to combine VMware's multi-cloud and app modernization capabilities with the Atos cloud, as well as cybersecurity expertise and technology integration from Atos. The capabilities are designed to provide businesses and industries with the key building blocks to rapidly design, develop, deploy, better secure, and manage Data Spaces that are compliant with jurisdictional data governance requirements. Organizations can also utilize and monetize existing data to create machine learning and artificial intelligence services, and enable new industry-specific services for:

• Healthcare and life sciences - facilitating the merge and exchange of health data to accelerate research and clinical trials.
• Financial services - developing cross-company and cross-border services and collaboration ecosystems, for example with a sustainable finance platform to comply with Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) requirements.
• Utilities - optimizing the electric networks for the charging of electric vehicles.

"With a comprehensive set of data space capabilities from VMware and Atos, organizations will gain access to a viable and rapid way to more securely share, manage and monetize their data," said Laurent Allard, Head of Sovereign Cloud EMEA, VMware. "Today's world is multi-cloud. Aligned to the principles of Gaia-X, the suite of capabilities will be designed to deliver the interoperability, reversibility and security required for European businesses and industries to create value from data and drive their digital ambitions faster."

"VMware and Atos are long-term partners and share a commitment to helping organizations drive value from data," said Frédéric Malicki, CTO, Southern Europe, Atos. "By supporting the acceleration of Data Space development and data sovereignty with the capabilities from VMware and Atos, we expect to give customers the tools to drive value not just from their own data, but also from federated data, collaboratively with partners and peers. Organizations can transform existing data into new services that, for example, could help farmers better predict the weather or human health organizations improve living conditions for the elderly with automated energy management."

The capabilities provided by VMware and Atos are expected to include:

• VMware Tanzu Data Services - to enable fast, scalable development and deployment of modern applications in the Data Space across teams and clouds by transforming the way enterprises build, run, and manage applications on Kubernetes. Tanzu Data Services are a set of core services that are part of the broader VMware Tanzu offering.
• VMware Cloud Foundation - to connect the Data Space with cloud infrastructure including data storage platforms and to make use of already existing data.
• VMware Versatile Data Kit - to reduce ‘unplanned work' using a Data SDK, which includes the building blocks to build data applications with minimal effort and a plugin framework to extend or inspect any part of the data application; and a Control Service Server that enables users to manage data jobs by building, packaging, installing, tracking dependencies, and maintaining versioning.
• Atos cloud capabilities - to support the shift to digital business.
• Atos Edge and Bare Metal-as-a-Service capabilities - to facilitate use cases and enable the edge-to-cloud continuum.
• Atos Cybersecurity products and services - to maintain data confidentiality, integrity, and availability.
• Atos Digital Hub - to create shared and transparent tailored platforms that enable and orchestrate value chains within extended data-driven ecosystems.

These capabilities will be supported by the reversibility, interoperability, and portability VMware's cloud partners deliver. With data hosted on a common peer-to-peer framework to ensure the compatibility of architecture between cloud providers, organizations can place their data with any of the participating cloud providers to take full advantage of the services they offer, while retaining the ability to move apps or federate data on other cloud provider platforms as required.