Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) is personally committed to the cloud project of SAP and Microsoft. At a conference with the prime ministers of the federal states on June 20, Scholz “informed” about the cloud offering, which aims to provide federal and state authorities with a particularly high level of data protection for Microsoft services. This is revealed in documents from a meeting of the IT Planning Council, which are available to c’t.
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A government spokesman did not want to say what exactly the Chancellor said at the conference. According to one Handelsblatt report Scholz appealed to the country’s leaders to make a commitment to using the cloud. Such a sovereign cannot function without the cloud. He is said to have literally said that this was a “very important moment for Germany” and that he would “immediately sign a contract.” According to the newspaper, Scholz had an appointment with SAP boss Christian Klein shortly before the conference.
At the Prime Minister’s Conference on June 20, Chancellor Olaf Scholz spoke about SAP and Microsoft’s Delos Cloud.
(Image: Federal Government/Guido Bergmann)
Countries should recognise the “potential added value”.
According to the IT Planning Council documents, Scholz and the prime ministers agreed that the federal and state governments “will exchange information themselves again in a suitable format in a timely manner.” The Federal Ministry of the Interior convened a special meeting of the IT Planning Council on short notice and prepared a proposed resolution. According to it, the committee should “welcome the interest of the states and municipalities” in the SAP Microsoft Cloud and recognize the “potential added value of this shared use.”
However, the federal government rejected the states’ proposed resolution: no resolution was passed at the meeting. According to statements by participants, representatives of many states felt neglected by the federal government.
Contra from Kiel and Erfurt
Schleswig-Holstein and Thuringia had already submitted an amendment explicitly criticising the Microsoft SAP project. “For the sovereignty of a state, the ability to influence the operational processes of the IT solutions used and to control the state’s data flows is essential,” it says – a swipe at the proprietary Microsoft software that forms the core of its cloud. Schleswig-Holstein relies on open source software for its officials and is currently switching to LibreOffice.
Scholz has probably been familiar with the Microsoft SAP project for a long time: The American company made an offer to the federal government in 2021 to set up a special government cloud together with a German operating company. On behalf of the federal government, the Ministry of Finance led the negotiations with Microsoft – and Scholz was also finance minister at the time. In 2022, SAP and Arvato Systems announced that they wanted to take over cloud operations.
Scared of SAP?
This model aims to ensure that data is legally protected from the reach of US authorities. Microsoft should only supply the software, on the other hand, SAP subsidiary Delos should be responsible for the ownership and marketing of the cloud, and Arvato Systems wants to operate the data centers. Detailed technical protective measures are also planned: According to Delos, for example, Microsoft will provide the authorities with the source code of all updates. Those involved therefore speak of a “sovereign” cloud. Their construction is already underway: According to information from c’t, Microsoft is currently equipping the data centers with the necessary technology.
However, SAP now seems nervous about its chances of success. One sign of this is the surprising departure of Delos boss Georges Welz, who was recently replaced by Oliver Groth-Kersten. It is not known whether SAP boss Christian Klein discussed the Delos project during his appointment with Chancellor Scholz. The group says: “As a leading DAX group and employer in Germany, we are in constant contact with the government. However, we do not comment on the content of our discussions.” According to reports, SAP would like to see strong expressions of interest from politicians.
The exams will continue till 2026
The group is in a dilemma about investing billions in advance, while the federal government plans to check by the end of 2026 whether the cloud complies with government requirements, for example in terms of information security and privacy. The Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) is also involved in the tests “Red line” For cloud services. Officials can book cloud services only if the result is positive.
Another problem for SAP is that the IT strategies of the federal states and municipalities differ. Schleswig-Holstein and Thuringia are comparatively more reliant on open source. However, the other federal states want to obtain Microsoft services from the public cloud, at least for the time being and in somewhat less sensitive areas – i.e. directly from Microsoft rather than Delos and therefore probably cheaper.
For example, Lower Saxony traded in April with microsoft Special data protection rules for using Teams and thereby convinced the State Data Protection Officer. It holds Results to improve but “acceptable”. Hamburg is already working on introducing Microsoft 365 in the state administration.
(CWO)
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