Today, H-CLOUD has published its first Green Paper entitled “Cloud Computing in Europe: Landscape Analysis, Adoption Challenges and Future Research and Innovation Opportunities”. To support the European Commission’s (EC) work on the definition of priorities for the upcoming European digitalisation programmes, the Green Paper explores the question of how supply and demand can be improved in terms of quality and conditions of use, and increased to boost European innovation in the following cloud computing areas:
- Effective cloud federation models to stimulate the creation of a European public cloud service market leveraging existing capacities;
- Edge computing, its market growth, and the implications of the edge/cloud infrastructure balance switching from today’s 20% data at the network edge and 80% in cloud-based infrastructure to 80% at the network edge and 20% in cloud-based infrastructure;
- Adoption of green computing principles to the whole lifecycle of cloud computing delivery to support the transition toward a carbon-neutral (if not carbon-negative) digital society by 2050.
In response to this, the paper summarises a supply and demand analysis conducted by the H-CLOUD project aiming at identifying the status, challenges, and opportunities that Europe is facing with regards to the adoption and provision of cloud computing with a specific focus on federated cloud, edge computing, and green computing. The paper explores key challenges and opportunities from the perspective of demand in six key sectors: public administration, healthcare, transport, energy, agriculture and manufacturing. In addition to these, the paper focuses on the needs of small-and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). These seven perspectives are referred to as “demand scenarios”.
From this analysis, a number of early conclusions were developed to create discussions with, and feedback from, experts and have been incorporated into this version of the Green Paper (v1.0). This version is intended for wider distribution to the broader stakeholder community for further feedback and consultation. Following the public consultation, a White Paper will be realised including its outcomes.
Ultimately this will help the EC frame their future funding programmes, and the European stakeholders to coordinate key actions to achieve common strategic goals contributing to European competitiveness and ability to innovate in cloud computing.
You can read the whole Green Paper here (PDF).
If you have feedback on the Green Paper, please share it with us during Horizon Cloud Summit 2020 or contact us here.