Cloud providers launch SME onboarding drive for data

Several European cloud and managed service providers have formed a joint initiative to onboard 10,000 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) into trusted industry data spaces within the next 18 months.

The work sits within the Data Space Adoption Forum, an initiative of the International Data Spaces Association. Aruba, a founding member of the forum, is among the contributors. The group has outlined a technical and commercial approach that channels SME participation through local cloud and managed service providers.

Industry data spaces are shared environments where organisations exchange data under agreed rules. They have drawn attention in sectors with complex supply chains, where firms want consistent visibility into orders, production status, provenance, compliance information, and related records. Uptake among smaller suppliers has lagged, largely because of integration costs, specialist skills requirements, and inconsistent onboarding processes.

The forum is positioning its approach as a way to standardise access and reduce the workload for smaller companies. It also points to the scale of supplier networks as a barrier. The automotive industry alone has more than 800,000 suppliers, most of which have fewer than 250 employees.

Onboarding model

At the centre of the initiative is an "onboarding-as-a-service" model based on open-source software. It relies on cloud and managed service providers acting as intermediaries. They would host and operate the components a company needs to connect to a data space, rather than requiring each SME to build and maintain its own stack.

The forum says it has co-developed a multi-tenant architecture based on Eclipse Dataspaces Components. Multi-tenancy allows a single hosted setup to serve multiple customers while keeping them separated. The work also links to OPC UA architecture, widely used in industrial automation and manufacturing.

The software components named by the forum include EDC-V, described as a variant of Eclipse Dataspaces Components designed for cloud service providers. It also includes Connector Fabric Manager, a resource-management and orchestration layer for deployment and lifecycle operations. Another element, JAD, is described as a demonstrator package that assembles the components into a reference installation for providers building their own offerings.

Route to market

The initiative depends on distribution through local providers. Cloud service providers and managed service providers already sell hosting, security, and managed infrastructure to SMEs. The forum proposes that these firms extend existing relationships by adding data space onboarding as a managed service.

It also points to cloud exchange points and federated cloud infrastructures as part of the wider distribution picture. Under the model, providers would use their geographic reach to offer the same onboarding approach across regions and sectors.

Alongside the technical work, the forum is proposing an ecosystem structure spanning "every layer of the data space ecosystem", from cloud providers and systems integrators to OEMs, trust framework providers, and SMEs. It says this would create a more consistent onboarding experience across multiple data spaces.

Automotive pilot

The forum has highlighted work with Catena-X, an automotive data space initiative, as an early demonstration. It describes a pilot and collaborative workshop that applied the approach in an automotive supply chain context.

According to the forum, the same model can be used across industries, including pharmaceuticals, and across multiple data spaces at the same time. It is inviting SMEs, service providers, cloud providers, industry data spaces, and systems integrators to join further collaboration and adoption work.

Aruba's role

Aruba, an Italian cloud and digital services provider, is among the contributors. It operates data centres in Italy and has infrastructure presence across parts of Europe through a mix of owned and partner facilities. It also provides certification authority services through Aruba PEC and Actalis.

Marco Mangiulli, Chief Innovation Officer and R&D Director at Aruba, said ease of access would determine whether data spaces expand beyond large organisations.

"For data spaces to succeed, access must be simple and within reach of all companies across the value chain," said Marco Mangiulli, Chief Innovation Officer and R&D Director at Aruba. "With this initiative, Aruba - as a European CSP - provides infrastructure, cross-cutting expertise across the entire value chain, and local presence in support of data-sharing ecosystems, making these models accessible even to smaller suppliers."

Next steps include further engagement with providers and data space operators as the forum tests whether the open-source onboarding model can scale across a wide range of SME environments and supply chain settings.