Martel at the IoT Week 2022: the next tendencies in the IoT development in Europe

On June 20-23, 2022, Martel’s team attended the 10^th edition of IoT Week that took place in Dublin, Ireland. In a new post-COVID era, IoT is accelerating and facilitating new trends. Martel plays an active part in the several initiatives and projects presented at the IoT Week and in the discussions shaping the future of IoT-driven research and innovation developments in Europe.

• Meta Operating Systems: the future European platforms for the IoT and Edge

During the event, the European Commission officially announced the recently awarded Horizon Europe projects that will play an important role in strengthening the European supply and value chains in the cloud-to-edge computing space. The so-called Meta-OS projects focused on developing next-generation meta operating systems for edge and IoT, are expected to innovate by exploiting network functions such as cloud/fog communication with a substantial integration of 5G features and network virtualisation.

Martel will coordinate two of these projects: FluiDOS and OpenContinuum. While the first project is a Research and Innovation Action that will deliver a fluid, dynamic, scalable, and trustworthy computing continuum, spanning across devices and unifying edge and cloud in an energy-efficient manner, OpenContinuum is a Coordination and Support Action that will foster European strategic autonomy and interoperability through an open ecosystem, with open source and open standards as two key enablers to be supported and leveraged throughout the community.

• NGIoT is at work to ​​strengthen the emerging technologies in Europe

The evolution of the IoT into the Next-generation IoT is marked by a series of technological advances. In this regard, the NGIoT initiative brought together the European Commission and top experts to discuss the priorities for the future in the convergence between the cloud and Edge along the human-cloud computing continuum.

The main takeaway from the IoT Week discussions is that Europe has a key role to play in the convergence of Cloud, IoT and Edge and in this respect the engagement of all European industry players, from larger to smaller, is essential. As a matter of fact, Europe is less strong at transforming research into economic and industrial leadership, which is now essential to unleashing to the disruptive power of next-generation IoT technologies across several vertical market segments. Therefore public and private strategies, agendas and investments should align while ensuring all market players have a part in this transformation.

“IoT is at the convergence of several advanced technologies that will be key to evolving and accelerating the sustainable transformation of our society and our economy. Supporting SMEs and start-ups is a crucial priority for Europe to limit market monopolisation by the big tech players while strengthening the European position in the global technological scene”, said Dr Monique Calisti, CEO of Martel Innovate and Coordinator of the Horizon 2020 EU-IoT project.

• Sustainability at the core of digital technologies

IoT technologies have a crucial role to play in driving Europe towards climate neutrality and supporting the green digital transition of our society. Spanning from smart communities to next-generation IoT and edge computing domains, Martel’s non-profit initiative Digital for Planet promoted a lively debate on the challenges and key priorities that EU researchers and innovators shall address to advance sustainability across ICT verticals.

 “The green and digital transition of our society offer unique opportunities to address essential societal and environmental challenges we are facing while creating new jobs and benefiting all citizens. What is essential for this to happen fast and efficiently is to create an ecosystem that gathers different communities and engages all relevant stakeholders in the development and promotion of digital sustainable research, innovation and policy-driven efforts.”, said Dr Giovanni Rimassa, Vice-President of D4P.

• Enabling technologies for smart and sustainable cities

Many municipalities worldwide are working hard to exploit IoT and more advanced ICT technologies to deliver smarter, safer and more inclusive cities and communities. The challenge is great, especially when it comes to improving the environmental resilience of our cities. Martel is at work to build digitally empowered and sustainable smart communities with Orchestra Cities, an open-source IoT-based platform to enable data-driven and participatory planning.

“With Orchestra Cities we go beyond a simple collection of data. We deliver smart services that process, interlink and make these data accessible thanks to IoT and AI, ensuring a fully green & digital transition for the cities we live in,” claimed Dr Federico Facca, CTO of Martel.

The IoT Week 2022 was an incredible opportunity for our team to engage with our partners at work for next-generation IoT technologies and solutions toward a human-centric digital transformation of our society. Effective solutions toward these goals can only be found when acting in an open and collaborative dimension.