Complete control – T-Systems creates a safe marketplace for data sharing

04-18-2018: T-Systems now provides a vital building block for digitalizing industry. With its Telekom Data Intelligence Hub (Telekom DIH), Deutsche Telekom’s business customer arm is launching a platform for secure data sharing. What sets it apart is that the data traffic goes directly and solely between the companies providing data and their partners with end-to-end encryption, without data having to be stored externally or centrally. The companies providing data stay in complete control of their data and can at all times control who has access to what data and to what extent. This serves to simplify data sharing between manufacturers and suppliers in planning, production and logistics, for example. Telekom DIH thus provides a key element required for the digital factory.

Secure marketplace for data

Besides straightforward data sharing, Telekom DIH also provides easy access to tools for processing and analyzing data, such as Internet of Things services and applications for machine learning and artificial intelligence. This means that, for the first time, a secure marketplace is available where data can be traded, and also processed and analyzed as required. The digital services for the marketplace are provided using Deutsche Telekom’s secure cloud. Telekom DIH will be rolled out to customers during the second half of 2018.

“The Telekom Data Intelligence Hub is a secure marketplace for data, data analysis tools and algorithms that spans various companies and industries. It therefore fulfills a key interface function between providers of data and solutions and users – something that has been missing in the field of data management till now. Telekom DIH provides a complete market overview of data that on the one hand are freely available, and on the other are offered for sale and purchase,” explains Dr. Ingo Hofacker, who is responsible for IoT business at Deutsche Telekom. Companies can now monetize their data easily and securely, develop new business models and data-based products and services and in doing so rely on the high data security standards of Deutsche Telekom.

Salzgitter AG to showcase application at HANNOVER MESSE

Salzgitter AG and T-Systems will be showcasing a jointly developed example application for Telekom DIH at the Hannover Messe Industrie. The steel company is using the hub’s interfaces to share data about the ordering process with a raw material supplier in an automated system. The data about e.g. steel grades and delivery routes come from different systems and are therefore largely incompatible. In the past, data like this had to be converted and adapted in a complicated procedure before the other business partner in question could process it in their systems. Thanks to Telekom DIH, data can now be intelligently reconciled and shared between Salzgitter AG and its supplier in an automated process. This boosts the processing speed enormously and at the same time reduces the coordination effort for everyone involved in the data exchange.

The challenge of ever greater data sharing

According to a study by consultants at PricewaterhouseCoopers, 74 percent of all medium-sized and large companies in Germany share data with their customers and business partners. Three-quarters of companies believe they will face an even greater need to share their own data over the next few years. At the same time, the companies are concerned they will lose ownership and control over sensitive internal data while sharing it and thus run the risk of revealing business secrets.

Secure networking for the digital economy

Politicians, researchers and industry are therefore driving forward the digitalization of the German economy through initiatives such as the International Data Spaces Association (IDSA), which Deutsche Telekom also belongs to. The aim of the IDSA research project headed by the Fraunhofer Institute is to create virtual data spaces that support secure data sharing and simple connections in business ecosystems that span even international borders.

“It is absolutely vital for companies to protect their sensitive business information. It is therefore hugely important that the Telekom Data Intelligence Hub enables them to decide for themselves under what conditions they allow partners access to their data,” says Lars Nagel, Managing Director IDSA.

T-Systems is the first company to implement the reference architecture drawn up in the IDSA. This implementation received close support from the IT and cyber security specialists at Deutsche Telekom.