The Schwarz Group, which operates the retail chains Lidl and Kaufland, will in future offer its IT infrastructure as a service on the market.
The company announced this on Friday in Neckarsulm.
The German discounter group is thus following the example of the retail giant Amazon on a small scale, which has been offering its IT infrastructure as a cloud service via its subsidiary AWS since 2006.
Alongside Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud, AWS is now the world's leading provider of computing power and storage space on the Internet.
The Schwarz Group is launching its offering with the Stackit cloud platform for companies and public administrations.
"With this offer, we are paving the way for a European cloud solution from Germany and strengthening the digital sovereignty and competitiveness of our economy," said Christian Müller, CEO of Schwarz IT.
The Schwarz Group is thus responding to political demands for a convincing European alternative to the cloud offerings of non-European providers.
According to the company, Stackit's data centers are located in Germany and meet the "highest European security standards".
This solution has been in use within the Schwarz Group for three years and has proven its reliability even at peak load times.
Around 4,000 people work in the IT subsidiary of the Schwarz Group.
In addition to complete cloud services, Schwarz IT will also offer so-called colocation services.
The customers operate their own IT hardware in two Schwarz Group data centers in Germany and Austria, without having to take care of a suitable and secure environment themselves.