Objectives
The aim of Future Cloud Cluster is to provide a forum for discussion and collaboration for research and innovation initiatives that address next generation Cloud Computing challenges and issues, including diverse forms of distributed computing (Cloud, Multi-Cloud, Edge, Fog, Ad-hoc and Mobile computing).
These comprises research on diverse areas encountered in Future Cloud Infrastructure and software management such as: the integration of heterogeneous devices ranging from high performance computing to Edge devices in computing infrastructures; the development and design of decentralised service-oriented systems; improvements to virtualization, data and workload abstraction technologies; service management and QoS; or the automation the organisation and management of the back-end resources.
In addition, the cluster studies research in the interoperability and portability of across these diverse and heterogeneous computing environments.
Moreover, we address research topics and trends associated with the hyper distribution of computing; These include the consideration of interoperability, portability, elasticity, self-organisation across many and heterogeneous resources in edge clouds, private enterprise clouds, aggregated cloud models and large Cloud set-ups; the orchestration and placement problems that address heterogeneity and trade-offs among consistency, reliability, availability, cost and performance.; and management models that cope with decentralisation and distribution of computing considering enhanced workload portability abilities, richer fault-tolerance verification with complexities at level of extreme scalability and parallelisation.
Today a number of research projects are already analysing these research areas from diverse perspectives and approaches. The main aim for this cluster is to foster collaboration among these existing research initiatives.
The goal of the cluster it is to create a critical mass of projects so to share experiences, collaborate on approaches and discuss challenges for adoption and future research.
Within this cluster we aim to offer a forum in which to collaborate in order to elaborate a broad EU perspective , so to establish means of project’s collaboration in two ways:
Technical
- Technical collaboration across projects
- Collaboration on scientific papers
- Share/Develop best practices to approach technical collaboration with Open Source Communities
- Developing roadmaps for future research
Dissemination & Exploitation
- Organisation of joint workshops with both academic and industry focus
- Support to individual projects by organising project innovation management events
- Approach to EIT Labs, FIWARE or others identified in the future.
- Organise joint exploitation workshops so to bring together researchers, technology transfer experts, legal experts, industrial experts, as well as external venture capital experts and get recommendations for projects.
- Whitepapers on specific topics.
During the summer of 2020 the Future Cloud Cluster has produced a revision of the research areas and challenges in the scope of Edge computing, Multi-Cloud, Computing continuum and Federated Cloud. These research areas and challenges express the vision of the cluster participants for future developments in European Funded Research and intend to serve as input from on-going and past project participants to the European Commission for the definition of new work programmes in the context of Horizon Europe. We have articulated our views for future research in this context around thirteen research areas which are depicted below:
| Research Areas | Description | Main focus |
| Area 1: Federation of clouds | Facilitate Cloud and Edge interoperability and portability, taking into account data privacy, security and applicable legislation | Cloud Federation |
| Area 2: High Performance Heterogeneous Cloud Services | Management of high-performance computing and high-throughput computing resources | Multi-Cloud |
| Area 3: Security mechanisms across Clouds | Security controls across providers | Multi-Cloud |
| Area 4: QoS and SLAs | Enforcement of quality of service across cloud models | Cloud Continuum |
| Area 5: Knowledge-Based Service Harvesting and Acquisition | Ability to discover and compose services from existing cloud offerings marketplaces | Multi-Cloud |
| Area 6: Dynamic Configuration, Provisioning, and Orchestration of Resources | Orchestration of applications across diverse Edge and Cloud environments | Cloud Continuum |
| Area 7: Deployment and management of resources: in a decentralised, autonomous way | Autonomic resource management | Edge computing |
| Area 8: Resilience and Scale | Continuity in service provision for Edge limited operation | Edge computing |
| Area 9: Energy efficiency and Sustainability for Edge and Cloud Continuum | Energy optimisation in Edge and Cloud environments | Cloud Continuum |
| Area 10: Software defined Infrastructures and Novel composition models | Mechanisms for abstraction and virtualisation of resources | Multi-Cloud |
| Area 11: Novel Data Storage infrastructures and services | Strategies for data intensive application execution | Cloud Continuum |
| Area 12: Software application development for the computing continuum | Software engineering, design and programmability of applications in Cloud continuum | Cloud Continuum |
| Area 13: Research artefacts for the computing continuum | Researchers access to tools, data and infrastructures | Cloud Continuum |
Contributing projects
| Project | Name | URL |
| ACCORDION | Adaptative Edge/Cloud compute and network to support nextgen applications | https://www.accordion-project.eu/ |
| FED4IOT | Federating IoT and cloud infrastructures to provide scalable and interoperable Smart Cities applications, by introducing novel IoT virtualization technologies | https://fed4iot.org/ |
| FogProtect | Protecting Sensitive Data in the Computing Continuum | https://fogprotect.eu/ |
| H-CLOUD | The Forum for Strategy Focused Cloud Stakeholders | http://www.h-cloud.eu/ |
| M-SEC | Multi-layered Security technologies to ensure hyper connected smart cities with Blockchain, BigData, Cloud and IoT | http://www.msecproject.eu |
| PLEDGER | Paving the way for Next-generation Edge computing | http://www.pledger-project.eu |
| SODALITE | SOftware Defined AppLication Infrastructures managemenT and Engineering | https://www.sodalite.eu/ |
| SmartCLIDE | The Stairway to Cloud | https://smartclide.eu/ |
| AppHub | The European Open Source Market Place | http://www.apphub.eu.com |
| ASCETiC | Adapting Service lifecycle towards Efficient Clouds | www.ascetic-project.eu |
| BASMATI | Cloud Brokerage Across Borders For Mobile Users And Applications | http://www.basmati.cloud |
| BEACON | Enabling Federated Cloud Networking | www.beacon-project.eu |
| CLOUDLIGHTNING | Self-organising, Self-managing heterogeneous cloud | www.cloudlightning.eu |
| CloudPerfect | Find YOUR perfect Cloud | cloudperfect.eu |
| CloudSocket | Business and IT-Cloud Alignment using a Smart Socket | http://www.cloudsocket.eu |
| CYCLONE | Complete Dynamic Multi-cloud Application Management | www.cyclone-project.eu |
| DECIDE | DevOps for trusted, portable and interoperable multi-Cloud applications towards the Digital single market | www.decide-h2020.eu |
| DITAS | Data-intensive applications Improvement by moving daTA and computation in mixed cloud/fog environmentS | www.ditas-project.eu |
| Elastest | An elastic platform to ease end to end testing | elastest.eu |
| ENTICE | Decentralised repositories for transparent and efficient virtual machine operations | www.entice-project.eu |
| EUBrasilCloudForum | Fostering and International Dialogue between Europe and Brazil | eubrasilcloudforum.eu |
| INPUT | INPUT Project | input-project.eu |
| IOSTACK | Software-defined Storage toolkit for Big Data | iostack.eu |
| mF2C | Towards an Open, Secure, Decentralised and Coordinated Fog-to-Cloud Management Ecosystem | www.mf2c-project.eu |
| MICHELANGELO | MICHELANGELO Project | www.mikelangelo-project.eu |
| ModaClouds | Model-Driven Approach for design and execution of applications on multiple Clouds | www.modaclouds.eu |
| mOSAIC | Open-Source API and Platform for Multiple Clouds | www.mosaic-cloud.eu |
| PaaSage | Model-based Cloud Platform Upperware | www.paasage.eu |
| RAPID | Heterogeneous Secure Multi-Level Remote Acceleration Servies for Low-Power Integrated System and Devices | rapid-project.eu |
| RECAP | Reliable Capacity Provisioning and Enhanced Remediation for Distributed Cloud Applications | recap-project.eu |
| SeaClouds | Agility after the deployment | www.seaclouds-project.eu |
| SPECS | Secure Provisioning of Cloud Services based on SLA Management | http://www.specs-project.eu/ |
| SSICLOPS | Scalable and Secure Infrastructures for Cloud Operations | www.ssiclops.eu |
| SWITCH | Software Workbench for Interactive, Time Critical and Highly self-adaptive Cloud applications | www.switchproject.eu |
Deliverables
Research Roadmap Update – August 2020
This document provides initial input from the Future Cloud Cluster to the Horizon Europe Cloud Research topics. This material the aims to constitute a useful input to the consultation process opened by the European Commission for future work programmes in the areas of Cloud Computing and Software, reflecting the vision brought from existing projects and collaborating institutions in Cloud and Edge related projects. In this document the participants have elaborated on Research areas and challenges in the areas of Federated Clouds, Edge computing, Computing continuum and Multi-Cloud for the coming years, while we propose an initial research roadmap for their development.
Research Roadmap Update – September 2017
This document presents the Cluster vision for 2030 including views on overall Cloud Computing challenges, Technological, Societal and European dimension of the challenges. In addition to this, the document presents initial work on Research areas and its associated research and development areas
Research Roadmap Update – October 2016
This document updates the initial work of the Inter-cloud Challenges, Expectations and Issues Cluster concerning the identification of Research Areas and Challenges.
Inter-cloud Challenges, Expectations and Issues Cluster Position Paper – December 2015
It provides an initial research roadmap for Inter-Cloud computing development areas as well as classification on different areas of work for on-going and past projects.
- The paper identifies a Cluster’s vision of Inter-Cloud topics development by 2020 and it presents and prioritizes both research areas and specific research challenges.
- In addition, we produce a analysis of EU funded research projects in Inter-Cloud area in which we have classified existing project’s work in relation to: Inter-operability approach, Topics and Scenarios addressed, Standards used and enabled Use Cases.
Next steps
- Set-up Technical Working groups for more detailed collaborations among project’s in the cluster.
- Participation in EU Research Events in 2017-2018
Contacts
- Ana Juan Ferrer, Atos
- Maria Tsakali, European Commission
