Optimized hybrid space-time service continuum in FAAS

Project Information

PHYSICS

Grant agreement ID: 101017047

DOI

10.3030/101017047

Project closed

EC signature date 16 December 2020

Start date 1 January 2021

End date 31 December 2023

Funded under

• INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Leadership in enabling and industrial technologies - Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)

Total cost

€ 4 985 712,50

EU contribution

€ 4 985 712,50

Coordinated by

GFT ITALIA SRL
Italy

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - PHYSICS (Optimized hybrid space-time service continuum in FAAS)

Reporting period: 2022-07-01 to 2023-12-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The current Cloud computing landscape is characterized by an extreme diversity of offerings and services, incorporating multiple solutions from centralized Cloud providers (such as typical VM offerings, dedicated nodes, hardware enhanced resources such as GPUs and FPGAs etc), edge and fog environments, HPC facilities, mobile computing applications etc. implementing the Everything as a Service approach.
On the other hand, applications are typically consisted of a multitude of components, others in need of locality and others in need of significant computational resources to fulfil their scope and objectives, with varying abilities to exploit the underlying services, varying requirements for operation and control as well as technologies and programming structures/languages on which they rely. PHYSICS empowers European CSPs (Cloud Solution Providers) exploit the most modern, scalable and cost-effective cloud model (FaaS), operated across multiple service and hardware types, provider locations, edge, and multi-cloud resources. To this end, it applies a unified continuum approach, including functional and operational management across sites and service stacks, performance through the relativity of space (location of execution) and time (of execution), enhanced by semantics of application components and services. PHYSICS aims at delivering a complete vertical solution that enables:
a) CSPs to offer advanced cloud application design environments to their main end customers (Application Developers) to abstractively create workflows of their applications, exploiting generalized Cloud design patterns for functionality enhancement with existing application components, easily designed and reused through intuitive visual flow programming tools (CSP Cloud Design Environment);
b) Platform-level functionalities to be easily incorporated by providers in order to translate the created application workflows to deployable functional sequences, based on the Function as a Service model, optimizing their placement across the Cloud computing domain and exploiting the computational space-time continuum as well as advanced semantics for the definition of a global service graph (CSP Optimized Platform Level FaaS Services Toolkit);
c) Provider-local resource management mechanisms that will enable providers to offer competitive and optimized services with extended interfaces offering local fine grained control of elasticity rules and policies, while applying a holistic set of provider-local strategies based on a wide set of controlling techniques and tackling key aspects of multitenancy (CSP Backend Optimization Toolkit). PHYSICS will contribute to open source tools and initiatives/policies (Gaia-X, Green Deal, EOSC, Eur. Strategy for Data), while validating the outcomes in 3 real-world applications (eHealth, Agriculture and Manufacturing), making a business, societal and environmental impact on EU citizen life.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The main exploitable results that were developed by the end of the project, aiming to support providers in offering optimized services, can be summarized as follows:
The Design Environment is the front-end for a FaaS design to be displayed by the CSPs (Cloud Services Providers) to the CSDs (Cloud Services Developers) their customers - mainly developers and owners - through which the latter can directly adapt to the FaaS model. It facilitates the application creation, adaptation, packaging and deployment permitting design patterns to be exploited by the application components. This cloud design environment will facilitate the direct implementation in the FaaS paradigm by enabling the reuse of function flows templates (patterns) and visual programming tools. Thus, enforcing an “assembly line” type of service creation that can later on be deployed and executed using the Optimized Platform Level FaaS Services Toolkit.

The Optimized Platform Level FaaS Services Toolkit enables the European CSPs to undertake new platform roles as well as revealing the means to implement these roles. Such as the spawning and orchestration of services through an automated process, and the implementation of interconnected and federated infrastructures.

The Backend Optimization Toolkit improves the backend management - management of infrastructure resources to be used by CSP - by enabling performance monitoring and new adaptation techniques.

Various exploitation paths have been meticulously identified and scrutinized, with a specific emphasis on individualized plans, acknowledging the invaluable contributions of each partner. Over the course of 36 months, the project's exploitation efforts have evolved, initially concentrating on assessing the operating market and delineating the unique developments undertaken by project software developers. In the latter phase, spanning the second period, the primary objective has been to bridge the gap between research and market by providing a comprehensive suite of solutions and approaches to problem-solving.
Knowledge Exploitation and Results Showcase (KERS) have been identified, underscoring the clear potential of PHYSICS and its substantial capacity to offer tailored value-added proposals that address customer challenges.
An initial overview of the integrated Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) approach was provided. The partners are steadfastly committed to extending the project's lifespan beyond its official conclusion, establishing a legal framework for result exploitation in the event of a business opportunity.
In the project's concluding year, a plethora of assets were seamlessly integrated into the Results Amplification and Management Platform (RAMP). Simultaneously, the dissemination of knowledge pertaining to the PHYSICS framework was expanded within the Function as a Service (FaaS) sector. In cooperation with the whole consortium, GFT drafted a template for an exploitation agreement to protect the IP developed during the PHYSICS project and insure a long and prosperous cooperation.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

From the beginning of the project an analysis on the FaaS market in terms of size, growth, profitability, cost structures, trends and critical success factors identifying gaps and potential for impact was performed. The findings set the basis for both a comprehensive understanding of FaaS and the PHYSICS project's potential benefits. The market study and SWOT analysis helped the assessment and created the roots for the project exploitation strategy. The main exploitable results that were developed by the end of the project can be summarized as follows: Design Environment; Optimized Platform Level FaaS Services Toolkit; Backend Optimization Toolkit. These three standalone bundles are part of the so called “3 bundles approach” which is composed of the aforementioned components as possible vertical solutions, partially independent from one another. In addition to this, we have the Reusable Artefacts Marketplace Platform (RAMP), which can be used as a reference to create joint exploitation paths in conjunction with the 3 bundles approach. These tools’ main objective is to support providers in offering optimized services.

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