Post by Jochen Hartmann

Reflections on my first year leading the Strategic Partnership with Google at Schwarz Digits 🚀 What a journey it has been! Having taken over the responsibility as Program Manager at Schwarz Digits for our strategic partnership with Google last April, I am now looking back at my first full year... Leading this mission means driving a digital transformation for Germany and Europe that is "transparent, secure, and sovereign." Reflecting on the milestones we have achieved since I stepped into this role, I am incredibly proud of our progress: ✅ Workforce Transformation at Scale: We have successfully transitioned the companies of Schwarz Group to Google Workspace. This migration was a decisive step "out of legacy and into innovative, future-proof cloud-based collaboration," maximizing both security and efficiency across the divisions. Falk Fleischmann, Moritz Baer Uwe Zöllner A critical factor in this success was our dedicated Change & Communication stream, which ensured our teams were supported through tailored training and proactive engagement to embrace this new way of working. Silke Gulden ✅ Accelerating the Cloud Shift: We’ve made massive progress in our Cloud Shift strategy. By leveraging the power of Google Cloud Platform (GCP) alongside our own cloud, STACKIT, we are delivering enterprise-grade solutions that meet the highest sovereignty demands. Dr. Stefanie Oestreicher ✅ "Workspace by STACKIT" – Sovereignty Defined: We have advanced a solution that provides Local Data Storage (LDS) and Client-Side Encryption (CSE) via STACKIT. This ensures that sensitive data remains resident within the EU and under our sole control—giving us and our customers "full confidence that their data is always in their control." Michael Brenzel Marco Neumann ✅ Best-in-Class Digital Resilience: We’ve integrated Google Security products to raise the bar for cyber readiness. A major highlight of this past year was bringing XM Cyber’s Continuous Exposure Management to the Google Cloud Marketplace, creating a "game-changing" joint offering. Lena Schaubach Menachem Shafran ✅ Innovation with Purpose: Together, we are opening up a "world of new, sovereign opportunities" for European organizations, proving that cutting-edge innovation and digital sovereignty go hand in hand. It has been an intense and rewarding first year of building solutions "on an equal footing." A massive thank you to my colleagues at Schwarz Digits and all divisions of the Schwarz Group, the leadership teams across the Group, and our partners at Google for the trust and the shared commitment to excellence Erik Müller See you next week at #GoogleNEXT. I’m excited to keep pushing the boundaries as we enter the next chapter! 🚀 #SchwarzDigits #SchwarzGroup #DigitalSovereignty #STACKIT #WorkspacebyStackit #XMCyber #CloudShift #GoogleCloud #GoogleWorkspace