en.Wedoany.com Reported - At the DACH Summit, Google Cloud outlined the timeline for its German sovereign cloud service: the service is scheduled for full launch by the end of 2026, with a preview phase leading up to that date. This timeline builds on a partnership established on May 20 with Thales, under which the French Thales Group will hold the encryption keys for the German platform.
The platform will be operated by a newly established German company that is legally and operationally fully independent from Google, owned by Thales and staffed by local employees. Wieland Holfelder, Google's Vice President of Engineering, Chief Technology Officer for Cloud Sovereign Regions, and Head of the Google Development Center in Munich, stated that root trust, keys, IP addresses, identities, and the entire operation are controlled by Thales, with Google having no access to operational content or data. This model is consistent with the PREMI3NS service operated by Thales subsidiary S3NS in France. The German and French sites will serve as backups for each other, enabling cross-border disaster recovery within Europe. The platform complies with the new C3A framework from the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI).
Google categorizes sovereign cloud services into three tiers: Google Cloud Data Boundary covers only data sovereignty and runs on public infrastructure; Google Cloud Dedicated, launched in Germany and operated by local partner Thales, additionally covers operational sovereignty; and Google Cloud Air-Gapped is fully isolated from the internet, intended for government and military use, with Holfelder citing reference customers including NATO, the German Bundeswehr, and intelligence agencies in the UK and Australia. These tiers are compatible at the API level, following the "develop once, deploy everywhere" principle, allowing applications to be developed in the public cloud before being migrated to the sovereign tier. In the European sovereign cloud market, AWS (with its European Sovereign Cloud), Microsoft, and German local providers such as Schwarz Group's STACKIT are also actively positioning themselves. Google revealed that its infrastructure investments in Germany will reach €5.5 billion by 2029.
Another key focus of the summit was agent applications. With Gemini Enterprise, Google plans to roll out AI agents to all employees, ranging from pre-built agents like Deep Research to no-code building tools, enabling employees to create custom agents connected to enterprise data. Google showcased Robert Bosch GmbH as a case study: Bosch purchased 120,000 Gemini Enterprise licenses during the summit and deployed the platform to all employees. Bosch stated that it had conducted a seven-month test involving thousands of power users. The platform runs on Google Cloud, partly due to data residency and compliance requirements. Google also mentioned other customers in the region, including Mercedes-Benz and Otto.
Regarding computing capacity supply, Google Cloud Chief Product and Business Officer Karthik Narain stated that demand has exceeded supply, with existing enterprise commitments receiving priority processing and new commitments requiring review. In the short term, Google is renting computing capacity from xAI; storage price increases are being mitigated through long-term contracts. Additionally, Google offers its TPU Pods for use in partner data centers. Google relies on its own chips: the eighth-generation TPU for AI computing and the Arm-based Axion processor for general workloads. For Axion, Google claims it offers twice the price-performance ratio of x86 instances and an 80% improvement in performance per watt.
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