Research database

European Cloud is at a negative where 75% of the European cloud market is dominated by non-EU players. These players shape the way that Europe is deploying and using cloud services. The project’s ambition is to create the technological and procedural foundations for creating a European Cloud Service (ECS) which exploits the HPC network and tackles specific-to-the-EU-economy requirements: 1. It must foster scientific excellence. Researchers have to be able to test applications using HPC network resources and switch their app easily to a commercial setup. This requires appropriate infrastructure and software development resources. 2. It must build around edge computing paradigm. The EU Commission is making direct steps towards creating a “Data Economy” supported by the creation of Data Spaces, laws that govern and facilitate data sharing and exchange. Edge Computing is a step in this direction allowing better and more data collection from IoT devices, people and other data producers. 3. It must directly support data sharing and exchange. An ECS must be connected with Data Spaces and Data Warehouses and allow the incorporation of data from diverse data sources and storages. Developers and researchers should be facilitated to play with (cross-disciplinary) data in a single unified environment while being able to engage the community and exchange ideas and findings, a matter already supported by the EU in other domains (e.g., European Collaborative Cloud for Cultural Heritage – ECCH). Increasing European competence in this domain is paramount for allowing internal market growth, the creation of the Single Data Market and increasing international competitiveness. But the project takes the idea of the ECS a step further. The project will develop the architecture for a European Cloud Service and develop various of its envisioned components. The project does not envision to create the cloud service but a comprehensive blueprint to create a cloud service where each ECS instance is connected to each other at the data layer through the Data Spaces and at the computational layer through the HPC network.