Even two years after the founding of Catena-X, one has searched in vain for practical examples. Now, 10 participating companies have joined forces to form a joint venture that is to fill the Catena-X dataspace with life and business. The focus is on EDC as a Service, an Eclipse Dataspace Connector.
Cofinity-X (image Cofinity-X) is the name of the newly founded company, and the ten shareholders have equal stakes: BASF, BMW Group, Henkel, Mercedes-Benz, SAP, Schaeffler, Siemens, T-Systems, Volkswagen and ZF. A Jan. 31 press release cites the goal of further advancing the implementation of the Catena-X data ecosystem.
To this end, Cofinity-X will create an open marketplace for Catena-X applications, with an initial focus on Europe, and will offer products and services for efficient and secure data exchange between participants in the Catena-X data ecosystem.
Cedrik Neike, member of the Managing Board of Siemens AG and CEO Digital Industries, is quoted as saying: “The joint venture helps us to achieve sustainability and efficiency goals in the automotive industry faster and more efficiently. This can only be done in a strong team at eye level between the automotive industry, suppliers and equipment manufacturers. Siemens provides Catena-X applications that can be used by all participants in the automotive value chain, especially small and medium-sized enterprises.”
At the core of the new offerings is EDC, the Eclipse Dataspace Connector. According to the home page, “Cofinity-X’s goal is for the Eclipse Dataspace Connector (EDC) to be used by every company to have a single standard for data exchange across the automotive industry. These standards will enable unified and sovereign data transfer, the creation of data chains, interoperability across companies, and an open and secure network.” EDC as a Service is designed to ensure that. Kubernetes and container technology are the technological foundations.
Cofinity-X customers are expected to be able to access initial applications and services from the end of April 2023 to benefit from solutions in the automotive value chain for sustainability, traceability, circular economy or intelligent management of business partner data.
Application areas mentioned include: CO2 solutions for accurate calculation and reporting of CO2 values along the value chain for better transparency and to achieve and improve set sustainability targets; end-to-end and reliable traceability of parts and components across their value chain – from raw materials to recycled parts; intelligent business partner data management to leverage sorted, analyzed, cleansed and enriched business partner data.
Screenshot homepage Cofinity-X
The offering is particularly targeted at small and medium-sized enterprises, which also make up the majority of participants in the automotive industry.