A consortium of 39 European organisations from 14 countries has launched the new DOME projectto support cloud-to-edge infrastructure and services in Europe. The project aims to create a single access portal for stakeholders in cloud and edge services from providers to consumers, focusing on the principles of ease of use, inclusiveness and equality. DOME will take the form of an online catalogue of service offerings through a federated collection of independent marketplaces connected to cloud and platform offerings connected to cloud and platform providers' offerings.
Cloud computing is a key part of Europe's digital future, the data processing capacity needed to support its digital future. digital transformationThe EU's digital strategy objectives are being met through EU programmes such as the Digital Europe Programme and the Connecting Europe FacilityThe European Commission proposes actions to build essential capacities to be achieved by Member States in new high-end digital infrastructures and services and by improving and strengthening the capacities available at national and EU level.
In this context, the European Commission has redoubled its efforts to support the deployment of state-of-the-art cloud infrastructure and services:
- Improve the availability of curated, high-trust cloud and edge services that serve the interests of crucial sectors that handle sensitive data, such as the public sector.
- Increase adoption of cloud-to-edge services among public and private entities alike and in verticals lagging behind in cloud adoption, such as the European healthcare sector.
- Strengthen the EU's open strategic autonomy, ensuring that the digital transformation of the economy takes place on the basis of secure, fair and resource-efficient infrastructure and services.
"The vision of the project consortium is to create a dynamic ecosystem that brings together all stakeholders in cloud and edge services, including infrastructure and data providers, platform providers, service integrators, certification agencies and diverse customers from all sectors. Our goal is to drive the EU cloud industry forward by streamlining current practices and giving EU customers more power than ever before".says Giovanni Frattini, Technical Director of Engineering Ingeniería Informática Spa, responsible for the project.
DOME - Distributed Open Marketplace for Cloud and Edge Services in Europe
With the aim of boosting the adoption of Cloud and Edge services in Europe, the first call of the Digital Europe Programme (DIGITAL-2021 CLOUD-AI-01) drove actions to deploy and operate a Marketplace of federated cloud-to-edge based services. The DOME project consortium, consisting of 38 members from 14 EU Member States, including 11 large companies, 23 SMEs, 2 research institutions, 6 non-profit organisations and 2 public bodies, was selected and will carry out the following strategic activities over 36 months:
- Operate the platform in accordance with security, energy and resource efficiency, data protection, ethical standards and portability requirements;
- Ensure the integration of state-of-the-art identity and access management services into the market platform to support its operation;
- Design a curation/verification process for services offered on the market, in particular for specific services in regulated sectors (e.g. healthcare, energy, finance...);
- Implement interconnections with similar markets and service catalogues that already exist in some Member States;
- Enable access, through a single EU portal, to an online catalogue of existing cloud-based service offerings up to the edge that comply with a pre-defined set of EU rules and requirements available in the forthcoming EU Cloud Rulebook;
- Implement service brokering functionality to enable transactions between providers and users in the marketplace; and
- Ensure a vendor-independent technical architecture and reference framework.
Key assets: Sovereignty, trust and reputation.
By meeting EU market requirements, the quality of DOME's service catalogue will ensure its reputation for building a trustworthy information brand, through governance mechanisms and trust-enhanced transactions, in line with Gaia-X specifications.
DOME ensures fair competition and strict vendor neutrality in the positioning of services in the market, offering equal business opportunities to all players in a win-win model that is fair and open to all who meet the established rules and requirements. This will enable European technology providers to develop new digital services and offer cutting-edge AI-enhanced solutions to increase and optimise productivity in the public and private sectors.
38 members of the consortium from 14 EU countries joined forces
DOME is coordinated by Engineering Ingegneria Informatica Spa in collaboration with the FIWARE Foundation as technical coordinator, and the partnership involves organisations from industry, research institutions and academia such as: Active Ageing Association; Akademia Gorniczo-Hutnicza; Beia ConsultInternational; Cloudferro; Consorzio Red Alastria; Consorzio Sistema Informativo; Dawex; Dekra Testing And Certification; Demetrix; Digitanimal; E-Group Ict Software; Elliot Cloud; Etna Hitech; Eurocrime; European Dynamics; Expert.Ai S.P.A. ; Fundingbox Research; Future Internet Consulting; Golem; Hashnet; Idom Consulting; In 2 Ingenieria De La Información; Inno-Focus; Ionos; Libelium Comunicaciones; Nicos Aktiengesellschaft; Orange; Outscale; Pons Ip Sa; Portel Logistic; Stichting Ishare Foundation; Teamdev; Tecnalia Fundacion Research & Innovation; Time.Lex; Torino E Piemonte Exchange; Ubiwhere.
DOME has received funding from the European Union's Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under grant agreement no. 101084071.