Cloud Computing
a) Research and Innovation Actions (RIA)
Proposals will address at least one the following areas:
- New modelling techniques and mechanisms are needed to compose and coordinate resources across heterogeneous clouds, including micro local clouds, private enterprise clouds, aggregated and hybrid cloud models facilitating interoperability and data portability between cloud service providers. Techniques that guarantee privacy, security, identity are essential.
- Edge computing (fog computing) technologies that integrate the limited memory, storage and computation of fog nodes that are closer to where data are generated into the cloud architecture and allow to make intelligent decisions when to move computation from the edge to the cloud, while taking into account the network capabilities as well as the security and/or sensitivity of data.
- New management strategies aimed to design and develop an efficient, coordinated, robust, secure and service agnostic management of the set of resources brought by combining cloud, IoT, Big Data and fog computing. Solutions for consistent resources categorization, abstraction and monitoring are fundamental. Proposed solutions should also envision the development of novel collaborative (sharing) scenarios and innovative service execution approaches that allow the dynamic allocation of cloud services to improve performance, and to facilitate automatic discovery and composition of cloud services at IaaS, PaaS and SaaS levels (Infrastructure, Platform and Software as a Service). The provision and its user-friendly combination, usage and orchestration of such services should particularly look at SMEs and public sector users.
The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of between EUR 3 and 5 million would allow this area to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.
b) Coordination and Support Actions (CSA)
Proposals in this action will address the following:
- Facilitate awareness of stakeholders in research and policy matters related to Cloud Computing.
- Coordinate stakeholders in Cloud Computing and act as support to R&D programmes/activities by disseminating project results and organising scientific and policy events, developing research and innovation roadmaps, and addressing pre-standardisation initiatives.
Develop competitive cloud solutions based on advanced cloud platforms and services and cloud-based software and data applications, as well as the opportunities brought by considering the edge devices capacities. Such solutions should also address stringent security, data protection, performance, resilience and energy-efficiency requirements to respond to the future digitisation needs of industry and the public sector. Addressing these challenges will also be part of and contribute to the technological ambitions for the Next Generation Internet (NGI) and the Internet of Things (IoT).
a) Research and Innovation Actions (RIA)
- Contribute to the development of an ecosystem that will respond to the future digitisation needs of industry and the public sector;
- Assist the development of new cloud-based services and infrastructures in Europe and foster an industrial capability in the cloud computing sector;
- Create new opportunities to encourage European-based providers, in particular SMEs, to develop and offer cloud-based services based on the most advanced technologies;
- Leverage research and innovation projects to support the development and deployment of innovative cloud-based services and next generation applications, for the public and private sectors (including standardisation and applications for Big-Data and other sector-specific applications).
b) Coordination and Support Actions (CSA)
- Creation of a sustainable European forum of stakeholders representing the Cloud Computing research, industry and users.