We’re excited to share that our OpenNebula TechDay Madrid, held on March 14 and focused on Cloud Sovereignty and Open Source in the Public Sector, was a fantastic success! A big thank you to everyone who joined us and contributed to this amazing event 👏 Special thanks to Deloitte for hosting this TechDay at their Madrid office.

We would also like to extend our gratitude to our guest speakers and panelists from the Spanish State Secretariat for Telecommunications and Digital Infrastructures (Ministry of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation), Comunidad de Madrid, The Linux Foundation, RedIris, and Telefónica. Their presence and participation added tremendous value to the event and led to really interesting discussions about technological priorities, challenges, and emerging business models around open source and edge computing.

The event saw attendance from more than 70 people keen on discussing how Public Sector entities across Europe are integrating open source technologies into their cloud strategies, the obstacles they encounter, and how they overcome them. Additionally, we also presented the new, multi-billion-euro Important Project of Common European Interest on Next Generation Cloud Infrastructure & Services (IPCEI-CIS).

The TechDay was kickstarted with a welcome speech by our CEO, Ignacio M. Llorente, on how OpenNebula Systems provides an open-source cloud computing solution to our users and customers, and how OpenNebula is getting ready as a product to fully leverage the emerging edge computing paradigm. After his words, Alfons Buxó, Global Cloud Transformation Leader at Deloitte, explained the vision and challenges of adopting a sovereign cloud strategy, and how this can also be a great opportunity for the digital transformation of the public administration.

After this introduction, we had our first panel, whose main focus was how Open Source can support the adoption of Cloud Computing in the Public Sector. On this roundtable, we had the participation of Ana Jimenez from the Linux Foundation, Antonio Fuentes from RedIris, Jesús Macías from Telefónica, and Nicolás Camacho from Deloitte. While the conversation was mainly praising the benefits of adopting Open Source as a differentiator, there were some challenges on how to convince IT administrators in the Public Sector, and the difficulties found when Big Tech lobbies try to persuade them on adopting closed source technologies.

Following the coffee break, we presented the new Important Project of Common European Interest in Next Generation Cloud Infrastructure & Services (IPCEI-CIS) through a keynote by Jesus Marcos Morell, IPCEI-CIS National Coordinator at the State Secretariat for Telecommunications and Digital Infrastructures (Ministry of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation). This strategic EU project, which involves the development of the first European open source multi-provider cloud-edge continuum, will mobilize up to 1.2 billion EUR in public funding plus an estimated 1.4 billion EUR in private co-investments. OpenNebula Systems will play a key role as one of the three Spanish direct participants in this pan-European initiative.

In the second panel we had the presence of Adolfo Sanz de Diego from EducaMadrid, Concepción García Diéguez from Madrid Digital, Alberto P. Martí from OpenNebula Systems, and Alvaro Martín from Deloitte. In this session, the topic shifted to a more “political” point of view, discussing how strategic it is to control data, cloud technologies, and the actual implementation of open standards. Here, the main takeaway for public administrations was that they should try to avoid dependencies from proprietary vendors and find ways to gradually regain control of their critical technological stacks.

Each session was insightful, sparking rich conversations about how we can leverage open source for a more sovereign, efficient, and innovative cloud infrastructure for the Public Sector, one in which public administrators leave behind their role as mere consumers and assume a much more active role in developing and maintaining the open source technologies that are critical for their operations and services to citizens. We’re already looking forward to the next TechDay and to having more opportunities to dive deeper into these stimulating discussions! 🤓

Initiative supported by the Spanish Ministry for Digital Transformation and Civil Service through the ONEnextgen Project: Next-Generation European Platform for the Datacenter-Cloud-Edge Continuum (UNICO IPCEI-2023-003) and co-funded by the European Union’s NextGenerationEU instrument through the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF).