On 25 June, the interest group of entrepreneurs within the German Christian Democratic Party (CDU) organised a European Symposium of the Economic Council in Brussels with the title “Cloud Computing – Between Growth Opportunities and Privacy”. The symposium gathered both political and economic representatives to discuss European strategies for Cloud Computing, especially focusing on how to create a constructive dialogue between the private and public sectors, since they both play key roles in making Europe Cloud active.

The Vice-President of the European Commission and Commissioner for the Digital Agenda, Neelie Kroes, talked about the European Cloud Strategy. She urged Europe to “get back in the driver seat” in the ICT field and stressed the need for Europe to quicker adopt the Cloud. She highlighted the need for coherent European guidelines on Cloud Computing and in addition, she ensured that the aim of the Commission is not to over-regulate, putting innovation at risk, but instead to make the market accessible and efficient for all.

Jim Hagemann-Snabe, Co-CEO at SAP AG, stressed that Europe is too slow at capitalizing on ICT investments and that Europe is falling behind the rest of the world. According to Hagemann-Snabe, there are three current trends within ICT, including mobility of data, memory computing and cloud computing. He said that Europe has notable strengths to draw on within these fields and Europe could take the lead if inhibitors were removed (such as lack of security and trust in the Cloud), if quality standards were developed (such as the Cloud Golden Standards) and if centres of gravity around business clouds were developed.

Link to Neelie Kroes’ speech:
http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=SPEECH/12/490&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en
Link to more information about the symposium: http://www.wirtschaftsrat.de/wirtschaftsrat.nsf/id/europasymposion-am-25-06-2012-de