European Open Source for Europe’s Next-Gen Edge Cloud

Building a Sovereign Edge Cloud Stack for the 🇪🇺 Digital Decade

It may be too late to replicate hyperscalers, but it is not too late to achieve technological sovereignty in some critical technology areas

For the European Union it is essential to build smart technological foundations for how data will be generated, stored, searched, analysed, processed, accessed, shared and exchanged to the benefits of the European economy, its businesses, public entities and communities. The need to strategically invest in the next generation of European cloud and edge capacities has been emphasised on several occasions such as in the European Strategy for Data, in the EU Flagship area “Scale up” under the Recovery and Resilience Facility, and in the Member States’ Joint Declaration on Building the Next Generation Cloud in Europe of 15 October 2020.

In early March 2021, the European Commission presented its 2030 Digital Compass, acknowledging Europe’s vulnerabilities, its increased dependency on critical, often non-EU based, technologies, and the reliance on a few big tech companies, with less than 4% of the top online platforms being European. One of the strategic targets for the EU Digital Decade involves “10,000 climate neutral highly secure edge nodes to be deployed in the EU, distributed in a way that will guarantee access to data services with low latency”.

Open source impacts the digital autonomy of Europe. Against the hyperscalers in the cloud, it is likely that open source can give Europe a chance to create and maintain its own, independent digital approach and stay in control of its processes, its information and its technology

Against this background, a number of EU Member States, under the coordination of Germany and France, have gathered to offer a common industrial response with significant European relevance. The execution of an of Important Project of Common European Interest (IPCEI) on Next Generation Cloud Infrastructure and Services will strategically contribute to fostering European data leadership and digital sovereignty; stronger and sustainable competitiveness of the EU economy and; the flourishing of smart cloud and edge solutions which are highly innovative, fully interoperable, highly secure, fully energy efficient and respectful of privacy. Some of the objectives of this IPCEI include:

  • Enable multi-provider Cloud-Edge Continuum
  • Strengthening of EU digital industry
  • Development of European open source technologies
  • Openness and accessibility across Europe

It’s time for everyone involved in these initiatives to (re)discover the European open source technologies that can contribute to bringing Europe closer—and faster—to those objectives 🚀

In the digital decade, Open Source will be a key element to achieve Europe’s resilience and digital sovereignty

Commissioner Thierry Breton
Open Source Lisbon 2021

🇪🇺 Open Source Technologies

Over the years Europe has produced amazing open source technologies that are now used for running their critical IT infrastructures by thousands of organizations worldwide. Some of them emerged, back in the day, from impactful EU-funded R&D&I projects.

European companies lead the innovation and development of some of the most popular and mature open source technologies in the market, contributing with their success to Europe’s digital transformation and sustainable growth.

European open source technologies can play a crucial role in building a truly sovereign, next-generation edge cloud for Europe.

Zabbix – The Network & Application Monitoring Solution

Bareos – The Data Backup & Recovery Solution

K3s – The Lightweight Certified Kubernetes Distribution

OpenNebula – The Cloud & Edge Computing Platform

MariaDB – The Relational Database Management System

LINBIT – The Software-Defined Storage Solution

SUSE Micro – The Lightweight Linux Distribution for the Edge

🚀 Launch Webinar

🇪🇺 Relevant Initiatives

Launched by the European Commission in 2021 under the direct sponsorship of Commissioner Breton, the European Alliance for Industrial Data, Edge and Cloud fosters collaboration between EU industry and Member States on cloud and edge technologies.

More info >

12 EU Member States have joined forces around the IPCEI on Next Generation Cloud Infrastructure & Services to create a common cloud and edge infrastructure and its associated smart services for the future.

More info >

Gaia-X represents the next generation of data infrastructure: an open, transparent and secure digital ecosystem, where data and services can be made available, collated, and shared in an environment of trust.

More info >

The EOSC offers European researchers a virtual environment with open and seamless services for storage, management, analysis, and re-use of research data by federating existing data infrastructures across borders and disciplines.

More info >

🇪🇺 Infrastructure Providers

Several European cloud service providers have shown a clear commitment towards open source. They are playing a key role in strengthening the EU digital sovereignty and in building a highly secure, distributed, interoperable, and energy-efficient datacenter-cloud-edge continuum.

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