Cloud X Summit by STACKIT: "We have come to stay"

In September 2026, Cloud X Summit by STACKIT took place at the RheinMain CongressCenter in Wiesbaden. Last year’s location, Bildungscampus Heilbronn, has become too small.

2,000 attendees, mostly from German-speaking countries, plus the Netherlands, kicked off the event by listening to a keynote jingle performed live by a classical orchestra: the „Baden-Württemberg State Police Orchestra” was hidden behind the screen during the main stage presentations.

Some attendees came from farther away, though, like a delegation of Uzbek start-ups. 

Under the motto of “Xperience. Xchange. Xplore.”, decision-makers from enterprises and public-sector institutions put digital sovereignty at the center of their discussions – on the main stage and in the numerous breakout sessions and hands-on workshops.

It wasn’t the flood of new announcements we’re used to seeing at the annual conferences of the global tech giants. A lot of time was devoted to discussing why Europe needs greater digital sovereignty – an issue that PAC has examined in detail in the past few years.

However, there were also numerous announcements and highlights on achievements from the past few months at Schwarz Digits and STACKIT – all to emphasize that they have definitely “come to stay”. Some highlights:

Expansion of cloud regions & internationalization

In Lübbenau, the fifth STACKIT data center is being built at a cost of €11 billion; it is scheduled for completion by the end of 2027. Another large-scale data center is planned near Rostock (Dummerstorf) at a cost of €5.6 billion.

In addition, STACKIT will also be available in the Netherlands starting in mid-2027, where the partner KPN will provide the data centers and STACKIT will deliver the cloud solution.

STACKIT also positions itself as a sovereign public-cloud alternative to traditional on-premises VMware stacks for organizations seeking to move away from Broadcom. PAC recently examined the impact of VMware’s hosting partner strategy.

Expansion of certifications

STACKIT designs its services to comply with the strict criteria of national or vertical-specific security certifications, such as the BSI C5 in Germany; other certifications it plans to comply with are, for example, BSI C3A, Spanish ENS, SecNumCloud, and PCI DSS. 

The European Sovereign Stack Standard (ES³) is a four-level maturity model developed by Schwarz Digits to assess the level of sovereignty of cloud offerings. The maturity model is based on the official EU Cloud Sovereignty Framework (CSF), whose eight strategic sovereignty dimensions it expands to include the ninth dimension of artificial intelligence (AI). The standard is set to be transferred to an independent organization in the future to strengthen its credibility in the long run. Furthermore, the goal is for all STACKIT platform services to achieve the highest maturity level. 

Expansion of the portfolio

On the main stage, STACKIT did not focus much on individual features or functions but instead highlighted the growing number of available services, notably related to data and AI, as well as their increasing integration. It emphasized the importance of open standards and open source for the company. At the same time, the company stressed that matching the feature richness of the global hyperscalers is not its goal.

Schwarz Digits Defence develops IT infrastructure, cloud capabilities, and cybersecurity solutions for areas with particularly high security requirements, such as the armed forces, intelligence agencies, public-safety organizations, and the defense industry. The technological backbone is provided by STACKIT; the STACKIT Distributed Cloud is based on the principle of “Sovereignty by Design” and focuses on air-gapped and distributed operations. 

Expansion of the partner ecosystem

On the day before Cloud X Summit, the Schwarz Digits Partner Summit took place, so that the partner ecosystem also came together at the event.

The merger of Cohere and Aleph Alpha reserves a large portion of STACKIT’s additional NVIDIA and AMD AI computing capacity for Cohere – the company’s future brand – through 2030. With headquarters in Berlin and Toronto, Cohere will develop a frontier model, with Canada and Germany as anchor customers. Schwarz Group has committed $600 million in structured financing as the lead investor in Cohere’s Series E funding round.

Mistral AI, as the third partner, complements STACKIT’s European AI strategy.

Zscaler and Schwarz Digits partner to host the Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange control plane and security platform on STACKIT.

In July 2026, CrowdStrike acquired the intellectual property rights from XM Cyber as part of a partnership with Schwarz Digits.

The goal of these partnerships is to operate US technology on European infrastructure in compliance with data protection regulations, with the clear assurance that services will remain available even during political crises – for example, by running on a frozen software version. A similar partnership had already been established with ServiceNow.  

Celonis will run as a single-tenant solution on STACKIT infrastructure in the future.

Snowflake’s AI Data Cloud will be gradually integrated, with encryption at STACKIT.

RISE with SAP on STACKIT supports the operation of mission-critical ERP systems on STACKIT as a European public-cloud infrastructure alternative. The official market launch took place just before the event.

Google Workspace on STACKIT: Back in 2024, Schwarz Group and Google signed a strategic partnership. In the future, Google Workspace services will be hosted in data centers operated by Schwarz via STACKIT. 

A partnership with Cisco and Controlware was announced. STACKIT provides the technological foundation, Cisco supplies networking and security components, and Controlware takes care of the planning, implementation, and operation of the overall solution. 

STACKIT Cloud for Startups: STACKIT is expanding its start-up ecosystem, especially for regulated sectors. In addition to its sovereign cloud platform, it offers financial support, expert mentors, and networking opportunities within the Heilbronn start-up ecosystem and the Schwarz Group.

STACKIT Cloud Framework

In collaboration with partners, the cloud vendor has developed STACKIT Cloud Framework, a cloud adoption framework that provides best practices, blueprints, playbooks, and migration guides. It helps clients, but also service partners, identify the right path for cloud transformation.

Customer success stories

STACKIT highlighted some major wins in recent months:

The state of Mecklenburg-West Pomerania (MV) and Schwarz Digits recently expanded their partnership. The MV-Cloud will create a shared hybrid cloud infrastructure for state and local governments. The goal is to establish uniform technical standards, avoid duplicate development efforts, and operate digital applications independently of individual providers in the long term. MV has already developed the Digital Building Permit online process for all German states based on the One-for-All principle; 14 states already use the shared solution. In the future, the platform is to be operated on STACKIT.

Furthermore, the state plans to implement the AI-based tax assistant TaxBot MAXi. TaxBot is operated on STACKIT on behalf of the state of Hesse.

Bosch Mobility not only uses STACKIT’s cloud platform but also offers its own solutions through the STACKIT Marketplace.

Earlier in 2026, Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin and Schwarz Digits established a joint venture called Schwarz Charité Health Data GmbH  to securely connect and harmonize sensitive healthcare data. The platform runs on the sovereign cloud infrastructure from STACKIT.

Also in early 2026, the European Commission awarded a tender that allows EU institutions, bodies, offices, and agencies to procure sovereign cloud services for up to €180 million over 6 years. STACKIT is among the four awarded providers.

As part of a consortium, STACKIT has won the cloud contract for a major project by the Federal Ministry of Digital Affairs and State Modernization (BMDS). Federal and state government agencies will use AI applications via the new platform.

The Dutch government is another key institution relying on STACKIT’s infrastructure. Schwarz Digits and the Dutch Ministry of Justice and Security (SLM Rijk) have signed a framework agreement.

Further client wins in the public and financial services sectors were kept confidential.

Digital sovereignty as a competitive advantage

One important message that PAC fully agrees with was that digital sovereignty should not be driven primarily by fear or regulation but rather by courage and a commitment to innovation. After all, if conditions are right and the issue is addressed in a pragmatic and goal-oriented manner, an adequate degree of digital sovereignty can be a major sales argument and competitive advantage (not even limited to Europe).

As a subsidiary within the Schwarz Group, Schwarz Digits and STACKIT can draw on proven expertise in protecting highly complex, decentralized supply chains and critical infrastructure (KRITIS). The digital unit is part of the group’s integrated ecosystem, which spans not only retail via Lidl and Kaufland, but also production, logistics, and the circular economy. The ability to support and secure these complex processes is now applied to other sensitive sectors.

Also, serving a 600,000-employee giant as client zero – which, according to the company, amounts to 2 billion AI-based decisions every day – is an advantage in PAC’s view. The fact that STACKIT’s intra-group revenue still far exceeds external revenue is likely to continue shifting in the future.

It is good to hear that ambitious and “courageous” European vendors like Schwarz Digits and STACKIT are “here to stay”. Cloud X Summit 2027 will take place in Berlin.