The European Union wants to secure its digital sovereignty. Its 2030 vision aims for a fairer European cloud market with much better data links. The EU Data Strategy, the Data Act, the Digital Market Act, and the Digital Services Act all push for this. They need open data systems and secure data setups. For that, both data and cloud services must be open and portable. Today, a few hyperscalers rule the European cloud market, above all the IaaS part. They hold big advantages. Their scale and broad investments are hard for others to match. Many other Cloud Service Providers (CSP) offer infrastructure. But they struggle to match the wide range of managed software services that hyperscalers list. It's hard for them to attract enough firms and grow. Open cloud services could fill these gaps. But if they only run on a few clouds in isolation, the market still won't be fair or diverse.

Open cloud services need open infrastructure. This is key to the digital sovereignty the European Union wants. It helps a wider, more even pool of players join the open data systems. It also lets open, portable data and cloud services run anywhere. Communities such as Eclipse Tractus-X build such services.

The Eclipse Foundation Xpanse offers one open-source framework for all cloud providers. It lets services move across any cloud. It's the open cloud services half of this pair.

The Sovereign Cloud Stacks (SCS) offer an open-source cloud stack. Cloud providers and private cloud operators can use it right away. The community builds it from the main upstream projects of the LF, CNCF, and OIF. SCS is itself an open, free, and sovereign option next to the main paid products. Its certified standards let core workloads move between vendors and setups. They also help teams that run and use SCS work together and share what they learn.

Together, Eclipse Xpanse and SCS form a base for open data and infrastructure systems. On this base, members can build new digital solutions. They can invest in cloud infrastructure and apps without being tied to one vendor. This talk shows how the two communities work together. We demonstrate a combined open cloud solution for deploying and running both infrastructure and apps.