Horizon Cloud – The Forum for Strategy Focused Cloud Stakeholders

Project Information

H-CLOUD

Grant agreement ID: 871920

DOI

10.3030/871920

Project closed

EC signature date 28 October 2019

Start date 1 January 2020

End date 31 March 2022

Funded under

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

Total cost

€ 1 499 721,25

EU contribution

€ 1 499 721,25

Coordinated by

MARTEL GMBH
Switzerland

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - H-CLOUD (Horizon Cloud – The Forum for Strategy Focused Cloud Stakeholders)

Reporting period: 2021-01-01 to 2022-03-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

H-CLOUD lead coordination and support activities for the consolidation and growth of the cloud computing research and innovation community in Europe, bringing together innovators, policy makers, cloud computing research, industry and users into an open, participatory and sustainable forum.
H-CLOUD provided a rich set of collaborative content, tools and actions to overcome fragmentation and increase collaboration in Europe and beyond, while aligning on a common direction to help create a Cloud agenda for the future of Europe.

With the start of the Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) of the European Union covering the 2021-2027 period, the European Commission (EC), after setting new priorities and directions to shape Europe over the MFF period and beyond.

In particular, EC identified three key three challenges in relation to EC strategies related to cloud computing:
● Cloud federation;
● Edge computing;
● Green computing.

Stemming from the above challenges and other priorities in the sector, H-CLOUD proposed different actions to coordinate the cloud community across Europe and beyond and to support the creation of impact in the digitalization of Europe.

In the first instance, H-CLOUD gathered the European Cloud stakeholders in a sustainable, informed and coordinated open community through the H-CLOUD Forum. This brought together innovators, policy makers, the demand and supply side of the Cloud market, to remove fragmentation and increase collaboration in Europe and beyond, while aligning on a common direction to help creating a Cloud agenda for the future of Europe.

Following the analysis of the EU cloud actors landscape, and a first analysis of the challenges ahead for cloud computing and, linked to that, digitalization in Europe (discussed in the Green Paper), H-CLOUD provided a strategic guidance on how to address challenges and opportunities to unlock the potential of Cloud Computing (CC) as core to the Digital Single Market objectives, building on the KPIs identified in the Digital Decade This resulted in 1) the final White Paper onboarding feedbacks from different stakeholder and consolidated through a public consultation; 2) almost 300 strategic recommendations categorised according different dimensions, such as stakeholder group and or type of action.

To accomplish its mission, H-CLOUD key objectives are:
● Objective 1 – To increase awareness of barriers, benefits, needs, research & innovation, and pre-standardization opportunities
● Objective 2 – To create and operate the H-CLOUD Forum community to facilitate coordination, collaboration, knowledge sharing and innovation
● Objective 3 – To develop the European Cloud Computing research and innovation strategy and its implementation plan
● Objective 4 – To ensure sustainability of the H-CLOUD Forum activities

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

H-CLOUD during the first year, H-CLOUD explored the European cloud landscape with the objectives of mapping it in across different dimensions (Portfolio), identifying the positive outcomes of the work undertaken by the European cloud community (Good practices) and spotting potential gaps, and creating a viable knowledge resource for the community (Catalogue).

As part of the H-CLOUD Forum establishment, a number of actions have been undertaken to ensure broad visibility, impact and support to the European Cloud Computing (ECC) community. In particular during the first year of project activities, H-CLOUD bootstrapped the community with different actions. The first step was the establishment of an Advisory Board that supported the evolution of the Green Paper toward a SRIDA along the 2020. A online set of tools to support the H-CLOUD forum activities have been completed, and they have been officially launched in September 2020. Large part of the effort from August on, have been dedicated to the organisation of the H-CLOUD flagship event: the Horizon Cloud Summit 2020.

The H-CLOUD strategy activities built on and complemented the outcomes of Forum establishment and Landscaping activities. The H-CLOUD activities largely focused on the quick delivery of early strategy outcomes following the indications received by the European Commission during the Kick Off Meeting. H-CLOUD changed strategy and approach to respond to the needs of the Commission in relation to the upcoming Horizon Europe and Digital Europe programmes and to the new strategic direction set by A European strategy for data and An Industrial Strategy package. The Green Paper is supported by a number of topic focused briefing papers and it has been consolidated in the CC-SRIDA version 1.0 following 5 releases along the year (not all the releases were public, the first public release beyond H2020 project and Experts group have been published in September 2020).

During the second and final reporting Period, H-CLOUD extended the analysis of the European cloud landscape including as well major EU cloud providers (Portfolio), and, accordingly further enriched the analysis of Good practices and updated accordingly the online knowledge base for the community (Catalogue). Outcomes of the activities were feed and reflected into the SRIDA. H-CLOUD's major focus was the transition from the Green Paper toward the White Paper and the final SRIDA. This resulted in the 2 major versions of White Paper “Cloud Computing in Europe: Landscape Analysis, Adoption Challenges and Future Research and Innovation Opportunities”; 291 recommendations, spanning every component of the strategy map presented in the White Paper; and the Strategic Research Innovation and Deployment Agenda for Cloud Computing in Europe (CC-SRIDA) which includes as set of recommended KPIs and guidance for their monitoring to facilitate the implementation of the SRIDA.

Major actions have been taken to better serve and support the European Cloud Computing (ECC) community and to engage it in the development and consultation of the SRIDA. A wide set of consultations (expert and public) have been organised from October 2021 to February 2022 with the scope of validating and prioritising elements of the strategic map and related recommendations. Finally the project organised 4 flagship events in collaboration with the EC and HUB4CLOUD: 2 Summit editions (2021 and 2022, where final results were, again, widely disseminated); the “Digital Autonomy in the Computing Continuum” and “Information and Virtual Brokerage Session Cloud, Edge, IoT” events.

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)

As a coordination and support action, H-CLOUD has a key role to support the promotion of Cloud Computing related novel research outcomes to a wide audience. In relation to this, the establishment of Cloud Computing projects communication task force plays a major role in the establishment of liaisons between projects and in the exchange of information project achievements.

Beyond that, H-CLOUD took active part to the Future Cloud Cluster, helping the supporting the shaping of shared research agenda on Cloud Computing and a reference architecture on Federated Clouds (the work on Federated Clouds is actually based on the H-CLOUD Federation Briefing Paper). In a more general sense, the work conducted on strategic analysis, evidenced a number or challenges that research and innovation yet need to face, that are core to stimulate the advancements of related research.

H-CLOUD CC-SRIDA Main Challenges

H-CLOUD CC-SRIDA Strategy Map

H-CLOUD CC-SRIDA Methodology

H-CLOUD outcomes and stakeholders

H-CLOUD Logo

H-CLOUD CC-SRIDA Analysis Framework