TECH Conference 2025: Schwarz Digits Expands Own Sovereign Cloud STACKIT into a German Hyperscaler

• Schwarz Digits is expanding its portfolio around its sovereign cloud STACKIT and developing it into a German Hyperscaler. The announcement took place at the Technology Experience Convention Heilbronn (TECH), with Federal Digital Minister Karsten Wildberger and other decision-makers from politics, industry, and science.
• For the digitalization of business processes, a European cloud solution from Schwarz Digits is now available: STACKIT, allowing the RISE with SAP journey to be hosted on Schwarz Digits infrastructure.
• Together with Aleph Alpha, Schwarz Digits now offers PhariaAI on STACKIT.  As a kind of AI operating system, it facilitates the development and deployment of AI in a sovereign environment.
• The secure communication service Wire will soon be available on STACKIT.  In addition to the companies of the Schwarz Group, leading companies and organizations rely on Wire.

Heilbronn, 26 May 2025 – Schwarz Digits is expanding its sovereign cloud STACKIT into a German Hyperscaler. At the Technology Experience Convention Heilbronn (TECH), the company announced new products that underpin this claim.

Dilemma: digitally falling behind or digitally dependent?

A key step in digitalization is moving data and processes to the cloud. This increases flexibility and productivity.  These data and processes contain extensive knowledge about the respective organization. Until now, digitalization primarily involved cloud offerings from US corporations. For their digitalization, companies either rely on non-European cloud solutions or they do not transform their processes and data into the cloud. The latter leads to Europe losing ground in digitalization.  Unilateral dependencies on non-European corporations, however, are a problem because they operate under different legal frameworks and still have a significant influence on our critical digital infrastructure. This makes it even more important to build up European capacities.

Digital transformation with SAP S/4HANA Private Cloud on German Cloud Infrastructure

Schwarz Digits is building up these capacities at full speed.  An example is the digitalization of business processes in the cloud. For this purpose, Schwarz Digits is now providing a new offering: STACKIT. "If companies and organizations want to be future-proof, they must modernize and digitalize central business processes in a cloud environment," said Christian Müller, Co-CEO of Schwarz Digits. "Until now, cloud providers from non-EU countries were primarily available for this. Partnering with SAP, Schwarz Digits can now offer a European alternative and support European companies and organizations in their transformation."

SAP will now offer RISE with SAP on STACKIT as an additional European infrastructure provider. "For a digital transformation that truly offers productive added value, the migration of processes to a cloud environment is crucial," said Rolf Schumann, Co-CEO of Schwarz Digits. For the companies of the Schwarz Group, we are also completely migrating the ERP landscape to the STACKIT Cloud via RISE with SAP on SAP S/4HANA Cloud.

"Our partnership with Schwarz Digits and RISE with SAP on STACKIT underpins our commitment to providing our customers choice,” said Thomas Saueressig, Member of the Executive Board of SAP SE, Customer Services & Delivery. “With the ever-changing market dynamic and global economic uncertainty around the world, it is crucial that companies have the flexibility to use the infrastructure provider of their choice.  With STACKIT, our customers now have an alternative that is specifically tailored to the needs of the German-speaking regions.”

Sovereign AI for Specialized Companies with Aleph Alpha PhariaAI on STACKIT

Another important tool for efficient digitalization is Artificial Intelligence. Many companies have extensive expert knowledge.  If they use AI models from non-European corporations, they cannot rule out with certainty that their knowledge will flow to competitors through the training of the AI.  To rule out this outflow and still make the benefits of artificial intelligence usable, Schwarz Digits offers sovereign, German AI solutions.  One of them is the PhairaAI Suite from Aleph Alpha. It focuses on the specialization of models for specific industries and organizations. PhariaAI makes it possible to train models for individual needs and improve them during training. Technological sovereignty is ensured through transparent and auditable model behavior. The results are finally accessible via a user-friendly interface.

Wire as a secure, sovereign alternative to WhatsApp and MS Teams

A weakness in digitalization is often communication. Even DAX board members often share sensitive messages and files via insecure messengers. The communication service Wire is the only messenger with a recommendation for use for the communication of 'Classified Information – For Official Use Only' by the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI). The company achieves this, among other things, through end-to-end encryption of all data directly on the end device and the world's first open protocol for end-to-end encrypted real-time communication ("Messaging Layer Security").

The companies of the Schwarz Group use the service for board communication and will soon roll it out to its companies. The public sector uses Wire as well. Schwarz Digits is working to offer Wire on STACKIT soon to set new standards in sovereignty and security.

TECH Positions Itself as a Platform for Political Decision-Makers

The announcements took place at the Technology Experience Convention Heilbronn (TECH).  At the Handelsblatt event sponsored by Schwarz Digits, decision-makers from politics, business, science, and the public sector spoke about the future of Germany and Europe as a technology location. Among those present were President of the Bundestag Julia Klöckner, Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Energy Katherina Reiche, Federal Minister for Digital and State Modernisation Karsten Wildberger, Minister President of Baden-Württemberg Winfried Kretschmann, and decision-makers from the business sector.