A Cognitive Serverless Framework
for the Cloud-Edge Continuum

European Commission
Open Source Software Strategy 2020-2023

The explosive growth of edge applications requires highly responsive services, large-scale scalability, privacy enforcement, and managed ownership. An effective platform for the cognitive cloud-edge continuum must address a number of unsolved challenges, many of them derived from constrained resource devices, infrastructure heterogeneity, and the need to meet criteria such as performance, resilience, security, data sovereignty, and energy efficiency. A disaggregated architecture is required, making use of Artificial Intelligence, automation, and portability to manage and adapt resources and workloads, and to respond in real time to possible incidents and security threats. 

Edge Computing is a new paradigm that moves away from centralized clouds and carries out computational processes as close as possible to edge devices, sensors, and actuators. 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.

This successful 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 major European open source technologies with impressive research and innovation capabilities and with an initial set of innovative Edge Application Providers and high-impact Validation Use Cases. This initiative shows our 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 🇪🇺