On the 19th of October 2021, HUB4CLOUD organised a panel session at the EGI conference 2021 – “Joining forces for a robust digital landscape: European Cloud open source and standardization effort”. 35 people joined the session that involved a deep discussion on the European cloud open source and standardization activities, licensing, privacy and data protection aspects for the SMEs and startups to consider.
The session was hosted and introduced by Dr. Giovanni Rimassa, Chief Innovation Officer at Martel Innovate and the coordinator of the HUB4CLOUD project. The panel included the following panellists:
- Brian King, Cloud Development Tools Community Manager, ECLIPSE FOUNDATION
- Alberto P. Marti, VP, Open Source Community Relations, OpenNebula
- Dr. Arne Berre, Chief Scientist, Software and Service Innovation Division, SINTEF
- Luca Bolognini, European privacy and data protection expert, Istituto Italiano Privacy
During the session, it was emphasised that cloud technologies are key enablers to unleash the potential of the European data economy and ensure its industrial competitiveness. The current cloud ecosystem needed to be reinforced and enlarged to embrace initiatives and efforts beyond the core European Cloud Computing community for aligning on a common strategy, while coordinating on its implementation.
The panellists discussed that roadmapping, outreach and community building activities lay an essential foundation for exploring and strengthening the European Cloud Computing ecosystem, however unifying support activities that facilitate the uptake and deployment of next generation cloud computing technologies also prove to be crucial to advance in the shorter-term the digital transformation of Europe. Open-source and (pre-)standardisation activities are pivotal enablers of technology and solution adoption and even ecosystem development. There are nevertheless multiple challenges to overcome on the path to exploitation, uptake and deployment of cloud computing technologies.
The panellists discussed these potential roadblocks and cited their recommendations especially for SMEs and entrepreneurs, to help them identify acceleration paths to support their exploitation plans, speeding up their cloud offering to reach the market. The session delved deep into discussions on the legal, contractual, financial, and business enablers that must be in place and known before being able to conceive and plan a sustainable value proposition.
Please have a look at the video recording of the event to learn from our expert panellists on the european open source, standardization, privacy and legislative aspects.