OpenNebula Systems welcomes the European Commission’s decision to approve up to 1.2 billion EUR of State aid for the Important Project of Common European Interest on Next Generation Cloud Infrastructure & Services (IPCEI-CIS). In a current cloud market that displays a oligopolistic structure dominated by non-EU hyperscalers and Big Tech corporations, this strategic project shows a clear commitment to developing together the vendor-neutral open source cloud & edge technologies that Europe needs to consolidate its digital sovereignty and open up the edge computing market to new actors. Led by Germany and France, an initial group of 12 EU Member States will provide up to 1.2 billion EUR in public funding, which is expected to unlock an additional 1.4 billion EUR in private investments.

“The IPCEI approved today is crucial to deliver breakthrough innovation on Cloud and Edge technologies that fulfill European requirements for interoperability, data privacy, sustainability, and cybersecurity. It will also provide the technologies and solutions to reach our Digital Decade Strategy 2030 objectives: a 75% of cloud uptake by EU enterprises and more than 10.000 edge nodes across Europe. With this IPCEI, Europe will reinforce its innovation leadership in next-generation data processing services.”

—Thierry Breton, EU Commissioner for Internal Market

The IPCEI-CIS concerns the development of the first interoperable and openly accessible European data processing ecosystem, the so-called cloud-edge computing continuum. It will develop data processing capabilities, and software and data sharing tools that will enable federated, energy-efficient, and trustworthy cloud and edge-distributed data processing technologies and related services. The innovation provided by the IPCEI-CIS will bring a whole new set of possibilities for European businesses and citizens, contributing to advance the Digital and Green transition in Europe.

The participating companies will develop an open source software platform that will allow for real-time and low-latency services by distributed computing resources at the edge, closer to end-users and IoT devices. The deployment of a new multi-provider “proximity cloud” across Europe will reduce the need to transmit large volumes of data to hyperscale data centers. OpenNebula Systems, one of the three Spanish Direct Participant in the IPCEI-CIS, is going to play a key role in this integrated project through the development of a Next-Generation European Platform for the Datacenter-Cloud-Edge Continuum 🚀

Additional resources about the IPCEI-CIS:

• Official announcement (December 5, 2023)
• Press release by the European Commission.