BRUSSELS, Belgium, February 08, 2023 – The Eclipse Foundation, the EU’s largest open source software foundation, today announced it has secured three new research programs under the auspices of the Horizon Europe (HEU) programme, including two Research and Innovation Action (RIA) projects (NEMO and NEPHELE) and a Coordination and Support Action (CSA) (Open Continuum).
These three projects contribute to the definition of the Future European platforms for the Cloud-Edge-Iot continuum.
“The Horizon Europe programme is leading the charge in ensuring that the EU is at the cutting edge of tech innovation,” said Mike Milinkovich, executive director for the Eclipse Foundation. “By securing the program funding for these research programs, we can do our part to catalyze the growth of new open source technologies that connect the Cloud to the IoT. The combination of the public and private sectors are slated to reap significant rewards in this endeavor.”
The OpenContinuum CSA (https://eucloudedgeiot.eu/) contributes to a join effort with a second CSA, UNLOCK CEI CSA, focussing respectively on the demand and supply sides of the Cloud Edge IoT (CEI) Continuum.
The core ambition of OpenContinuum is fostering European strategic autonomy and interoperability through an open ecosystem for the computing continuum. Such an ecosystem will contain the research and innovation action projects in the Cloud-Edge-IoT portfolio to be coordinated, the diverse community evolved from the current Cloud and IoT ones, with the addition of further actors, initiatives, and alliances of significance. Two of these projects are NEMO and NEPHELE.
The NEMO project (https://meta-os.eu/) (short for Next Generation Meta Operating system) RIA, is focused on building open European platforms for the Edge. Funded for three years, the expected outcomes of this RIA are a new generation of higher-level (meta) operating systems for the smart Internet of Things with strong computing capacity at the smart device, system and edge-level, embedded in a compute continuum from IoT-to-edge-to-cloud. Such an OS should be device independent and implement advanced concepts such as ad-hoc clouds, time-triggered IoT, and decentralised intelligence.
Increasing European autonomy in data processing required to support future hyper-distributed applications by building open platforms and an open edge ecosystem including business models, driven by European actors. Achieving trust in these (meta) operating systems among actors in diverse industrial ecosystems by leveraging open standards and - where applicable - open source.
The final RIA is NEPHELE (https://nephele-project.eu/), also funded for three years. A lightweight software stack and synergetic meta-orchestration framework for the next-generation compute continuum. Similar to NEMO, one possible outcome is the emergence of an open edge ecosystem including midcaps, SMEs and start-ups that foster the up-take of an edge operating system, e.g. through a modular functional spectrum of executable apps and services, for nurturing a European network of innovators and developers.
The Eclipse Foundation has decades of experience managing the governance of complex technology initiatives and multi-vendor organizations, making it the ideal organization to help manage projects where academia and the private sector converge. Its commitment to transparency, vendor-neutrality, and a shared voice will ensure that all participants have the opportunity to shape the future of the working group.
To learn more about getting involved with the Eclipse Foundation, please visit us at eclipse.org/research, or email us at research@eclipse.org.
About the Eclipse Foundation
The Eclipse Foundation provides our global community of individuals and organizations with a mature, scalable, and business-friendly environment for open source software collaboration and innovation. The Foundation is home to the Eclipse IDE, Jakarta EE, and over 400 open source projects, including runtimes, tools, and frameworks for cloud and edge applications, IoT, AI, automotive, systems engineering, distributed ledger technologies, open processor designs, and many others. The Eclipse Foundation is an international non-profit association supported by over 330 members, including industry leaders who value open source as a key enabler for their business strategies. To learn more, follow us on Twitter @ResearchEclipse, @EclipseFdn, LinkedIn or visit eclipse.org.
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