A Consortium of 39 European organisations from 14 countries launched the new project DOME to support cloud-to-edge infrastructure and services in Europe. The project is aiming to create a single portal of access for trusted Cloud and Edge services stakeholders, from providers to consumers and with strong focus on user-friendliness, inclusion and equality principles. DOME will take the form of an online catalogue of existing cloud-to-edge based service offerings made available through a federated collection of independent marketplaces connected to the offering of cloud and platform providers.
Cloud computing is identified as a central piece of Europe’s digital future, providing European businesses and public organisations the data processing capability required to support their digital transformation. Delivering on the objectives of its digital strategy, through the EU programmes such as the Digital Europe Programme and the Connecting Europe Facility, the European Commission is proposing actions for building essential capacities that will be achieved by co-investing with Member States in new high-end digital infrastructures and services, and by upgrading and consolidating available capacities at the EU and national level.
In this context, the European Commission has stepped up its effort supporting the deployment of the cloud-to-edge infrastructure and services to:
- Improve the availability of highly trustworthy, curated cloud and edge services that serve the interests of crucial sectors dealing with sensitive data, such as the public sector.
- Increase the uptake of cloud-to-edge services among public and private entities alike and in vertical sectors that lag in cloud adoption, such as the European health sector.
- Reinforce the EU’s open strategic autonomy, ensuring that the digital transformation of the economy is undertaken based on secure, fair, inclusive, and resource-efficient infrastructures and services.
“The vision of the project consortium is to create a dynamic ecosystem that unites all Cloud and Edge services stakeholders, including infrastructure, data providers, platform providers, services integrators, certification agencies, and diverse customers from every sector. Our goal is to boost the EU-cloud industry by streamlining current practices and empowering EU customers like never before before”, says Giovanni Frattini, Technical Manager at Engineering Ingegneria Informatica Spa, project Leader.
DOME – Distributed Open Marketplace for Cloud and Edge Services in Europe
With the aim of boosting the uptake of Cloud and Edge services in Europe, the first call of the Digital Europe Programme (DIGITAL-2021-CLOUD-AI-01) pressed for actions to deploy and operate a Marketplace for federated cloud-to-edge based services. The project DOME consortium of 38 members coming from 14 EU Member States, including 11 large enterprises, 23 SMEs, 2 research institutions, 6 non-profit organisations and 2 public bodies was selected and over the course of 36 months the consortium will implement following strategical activities:
- Deploy the technical infrastructure of the marketplace platform, with strong customer focus, user-friendliness, and inclusion and equality principles;
- Operate the platform according to 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 on the marketplace platform to support its operation;
- Design a curation/vetting process for services offered on the marketplace, notably for sector-specific services in regulated sectors (e.g. health, energy, finance…);
- Implement interconnections with similar marketplaces and service catalogues that already exist in some Member States;
- Enable access, through a single EU portal, to an online catalogue of existing cloud-to-edge based service offerings that are compliant with a pre-defined set of EU rules and requirements available in the forthcoming EU Cloud Rulebook;
- Implement a service brokerage functionality to enable transactions between providers and users to take place on the Marketplace; and
- Ensure a vendor-neutral technical architecture and reference framework.
Key assets: Sovereignty, trust and reputation
Satisfying the EU market requirements, the DOME service catalogue quality will ensure its reputation towards building a brand for trusted information, through governance mechanisms and trust-enhanced transactions, aligned with Gaia-X specifications.
DOME ensures unbiased competition and strict vendor neutrality in the positioning of services on the marketplace, offering same business opportunities to all players in a win-win model, being fair and open to all who comply with the rules and requirements in place. This will empower European technology suppliers to develop new digital services and provide state of the art AI enhanced solutions to increase and optimise the productivity of public and private sectors.
38 consortium members from 14 EU Countries joined their 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 academies such as: Active Ageing Association; Akademia Gorniczo-Hutnicza; Beia Consult International; Cloudferro; Consorcio Red Alastria; Consorzio Sistema Informativo; Dawex; Dekra Testing And Certification; Demetrix; Digitanimal; E-Group Ict Software; Elliot Cloud; Etna Hitech; Eurocrime; European Dynamics; Expert.AiS.P.A.; Fundingbox Research; Future Internet Consulting and Development Solutions; Golem; Hashnet; Idom Consulting; In2 Ingenieria De La Información; Inno-Focus; Ionos; Libelium Comunicaciones; NicosAktiengesellschaft; Orange; Outscale; PONS IP; Portel Logistic; Stichting Ishare Foundation; Teamdev; Tecnalia Fundacion Research & Innovation; Time.Lex; Torino E Piemonte Exchange; Ubiwhere.
