HUB4CLOUD Project kicks off

As the European Commission continues its effort in the consolidation and growth of the Cloud Computing research and innovation community in Europe, Martel Innovate is extremely happy to announce the kickoff of HUB4CLOUD project which steers the drive into fulfillment. HUB4CLOUD is a Coordination and Support Action (CSA) project that takes up the baton from H-CLOUD to extend and build upon its activities and outreach to foster the European Cloud Computing ecosystem. 

Under European Union’s Multiannual Financial Framework for the period 2021-2027, the European Commission (EC) has identified as a core objective the necessity to ensure “a Europe fit for the digital age”, in which digital technologies and solutions are strongly rooted in the core European values. In this strategic plan, cloud technologies are key enablers to unleash the potential of the European data economy and ensure its industrial competitiveness. The European strategy for data that specifically indicates how “the digital transformation of the EU economy depends on the availability and uptake of secure, energy-efficient, affordable and high-quality data processing capacities, such as those offered by cloud infrastructures and services, both in data centres and at the edge.” To support this action, HUB4CLOUD will assist growing the impact and relevance of Cloud Computing research, innovation and policy-driven efforts, while accelerating its adoption and deployments in Europe. HUB4CLOUD will ensure the creation of an open, inclusive, and sustainable ecosystem by running dedicated coordination and support activities, including roadmapping, dissemination, organisation of events, mapping of open source/(pre-)standardisation initiatives, and business acceleration activities.

Modus Operandi of HUB4CLOUD

The overall concept underpinning HUB4CLOUD’s ambition is to lead coordination and support activities for the consolidation and growth of the ECC ecosystem. It will achieve this by strategic coordination of research and innovation activities and future investment plans as well as by providing collaborative content, tools and services to help maximise the ECC impact. One of the main activities that HUB4CLOUD will take up and engage in is the Forum, that has been developed as part of the H-CLOUD project. The Forum is the platform for initiating and engaging in discussions encompassing the entire stakeholders outreach. It also functions as a document repository allowing members access to important documents relating to the various umbrella projects. HUB4CLOUD will engage and align with the experts from several of the Cloud initiatives and from RedHat, GAIA-X, CERN, GÉANT, EOSC, HELIX NEBULA, NESSI, OW2, FIWARE, etc.

HUB4CLOUD has divided its main activities into 3 technical work packages: the HUB4CLOUD GUIDE, AMPLIFIER and BOOST:

HUB4CLOUD_Activities

Martel’s role as the coordinator

Martel is positioned strategically as the project coordinator for this CSA. Martel has long experience in the technical as well as policy level of the European cloud computing ecosystem, IoT, 5G technology, AI, next generation internet, smart cities, and other ICT topics. Due to Martel’s role and active engagement in several of EC’s digital initiatives and projects, contributing to policy recommendations and roadmapping activities, leading and/or contributing directly to several European and International events for the promotion and impact creation, Martel is ideally positioned to lead this consortium towards the fulfilment of its objectives in an optimized, streamlined and coherent manner. 

Overall impact 

The overall objective of the project is “creation of a sustainable European forum of stakeholders representing the Cloud Computing research, industry and users”. HUB4CLOUD will aim towards the following impact that will be generated by the implementation of the planned activities around the three above mentioned technical  work packages:

  • Changes in the ecosystem in terms of composition, organisation and relevance – the project will analyse the current typology of the community and build upon it with new players especially smaller ones as well as public institutions. 
  • Changes in the stakeholders in terms of behaviour, relationships and performance – the project will bring together projects and communities, to facilitate their collaboration at scientific, economic as well as policy level and increase opportunities by possibly reducing time-to-market for new and innovative solutions and services.
  • Changes in broader context – the project will create an ecosystem that brings together cloud players of all sizes and ensure global competitiveness and technological sovereignty.  

Consortium

HUB4CLOUD is powered by a strong consortium of cloud computing practitioners and experts from ATOS, TECNALIA, TECNALIA Ventures and MARTEL INNOVATE (as project coordinator) who have the skills and expertise to steer the European Cloud computing ecosystem into building Europe fit for the digital age.