🚀 European Open Source for the Next-Generation Meta Operating System for the Edge Cloud

European Commission
Open Source Software Strategy 2020-2023

The explosive growth of the Internet of Things (IoT) and mobile applications requires highly responsive services, large-scale scalability, privacy enforcement and managed ownership. Reduced latency, increased security, data protection, and service availability are becoming critical factors in Artificial Intelligence, vehicle control, augmented reality, IoT, and entertainment, and in new data-driven services for EU strategic sectors, including manufacturing, aerospace, defense, healthcare, and energy. The only way to obtain all these benefits is by executing services “at the edge”.

Edge Computing is a new paradigm that moves away from centralized clouds and carries out computational processes as close as possible to mobile devices, sensors, and end-users. It has been identified as one of the major disruptors in the cloud and data infrastructure sector, and also as a strategic technology for Europe’s digital transformation. Today, 80% of data is processed in the cloud, a market currently dominated by non-EU companies (the so-called hyperscalers). For the smart IoT market, evidence shows that demand at the edge is growing rapidly, and the European Digital Strategy predicts that in 5 years 80% of data processing will take place at the edge. Gartner predicts this figure to be 75% by 2025.

This HORIZON EUROPE proposal is based on a simple but powerful idea: we—the European organizations behind this project—are determined to do more to strengthen Europe’s technological sovereignty and digital transformation. To achieve that objective in a solid, sustainable way, we have defined a unique project that combines the major European open source technologies with impressive research and innovation capabilities, with an initial set of innovative Infrastructure Providers and high-impact Validation Use Cases, and with a firm commitment to becoming a true transformative force in the EU technological sector in the coming years, well after the end of this project.

This is our common response to the call of the European Commission to work together towards a brighter, more sustainable, and more inclusive digital future for a technologically-sovereign Europe 🇪🇺