Schwarz IT: Europe needs confidence to build its own digital future

Schwarz IT, the internal provider of IT solutions and services for the Schwarz Group, participated in this year’s edition of GoTech World, the largest business and technology event in Central and Eastern Europe.

The company brought to the forefront the topic of digital sovereignty and how Europe can strengthen its technological independence, highlighting Schwarz Digits as a provider of sovereign customer-focused solutions: cloud (STACK IT), cybersecurity (XM Cyber), AI (Aleph Alpha), communications (Wire) and workplace (based on Google Workspace).

The company was represented on two of the main conference stages, Business and Transformation stage and Developers stage, by Octavian Ichim, CEO of Schwarz IT Romania, and Holger Schell, Senior Managing Director of Schwarz IT. Together, they outlined a shared vision on the role of digital sovereignty in Europe’s economic growth and how Schwarz Digits supports this goal through its cloud infrastructure and artificial intelligence initiatives.

In his presentation, titled “From Dependency To Discovery: Europe’s Journey To Digital Sovereignty,” Octavian Ichim emphasized that Europe has the resources, talent, and energy needed to build its own digital path.  

“Digital sovereignty is not about isolation, but about the courage to create without restrictions. Europe doesn’t need to copy Silicon Valley or to fear Shenzhen, what we need is confidence: to innovate in our own language, to design trust as a competitive advantage, to develop products not just for users, but for people, for citizens,” said Octavian Ichim, CEO of Schwarz IT Romania.

He also highlighted the current global landscape, where over 70% of employees use AI without authorization, 63% of organizations lack AI governance policies, and failure rate for enterprise AI solutions is 95%. In his view, true digital sovereignty means extensive understanding over data, tools, data flows, operations, overall digitalization and compliance.

In the session titled “Unleashing Business Value in a Digital Sovereign World,” Holger Schell presented how Schwarz Digits helps organizations create value in a world where digitalization and sovereignty go hand in hand.

“We are a full-service provider for Europe’s digital sovereignty. From STACKIT to AI and cybersecurity solutions, our mission is to help European companies trust their own digital potential, said Holger Schell, Senior Managing Director Schwarz IT

He described how digital sovereign solutions are used within the Schwarz Group to develop sovereign AI solutions. For example, the Schwarz Group is already making more than 500 million decisions per day based on AI.

Schwarz IT Software Engineering strives for the ambition to be one of the best Software Engineering units worldwide and derives different measures on its transformational way to achieve this. One is the ODJ (One Digital Journey) initiative, a unified platform for product teams for streamlined development of new digital products. The other is the NEO (Next level Engineering) transformation that covers especially the way of working based on principles.

“Digital sovereignty is about autonomy, trust, and collaboration. Europe should not dream in someone else’s cloud, it has the capacity to build its own digital sovereign cloud,” concluded Schwarz IT officials.

About Schwarz IT

Schwarz IT is the internal provider of IT solutions and services for the Schwarz Group — one of the largest retail groups in the world. The Schwarz Group operates in 30 countries, with over 13,900 stores and approximately 575,000 employees. The Group is headquartered in Neckarsulm, Baden-Württemberg, Germany.