The future of Cloud and Edge technologies in the EU context: Market insights and sustainability roadmap

As cloud and edge technologies become increasingly pivotal for secure data processing and sharing, Europe’s ability to lead in this domain is essential for economic resilience, innovation, and competitiveness. By fostering the development of scalable, federated, and secure cloud infrastructures, emerging initiatives such as the Important Project of Common European Interest on Next Generation Cloud Infrastructure and Services (IPCEI-CIS) and the CISERO project aim to position Europe at the forefront of global digital advancements, ensuring the continent’s leadership in emerging technologies that underpin the Digital Decade policy and overall sustainability goals.

In this context, several actions have been launched. An example is the UNLOCK-CEI project, one of the CSAs coordinating the EUCloudEdgeIoT initiative, as it represents a crucial link between the current state of the art of cloud, edge, and IoT technologies in the EU’s framework. UNLOCK-CEI recently held its final event, providing a comprehensive mapping of the state-of-the-art demand & supply of cloud-edge-IoT applications. More recently, the CISERO project has been launched to support the successful implementation of IPCEI-CIS actions, facilitating collaboration among EU member states, industry leaders, and research organisations. Its mission is to coordinate resources, provide technical support, and build a robust business ecosystem to ensure the widespread adoption of cloud and edge computing solutions. 

This event aims, on one side, to bring insights from the demand market of Cloud-Edge-IoT and, on the other side, to investigate how the joint efforts of Member States and industries through IPCEI-CIS projects can create its path towards the market. As a result, this event will discuss the key results of UNLOCK-CEI, which are synergistic with CISERO’s goals. These include key trends, market pathways, frameworks, tools, and methodologies developed throughout the project. Moreover, considering the strategic role of AI in the CEI ecosystem (from a solutions perspective, market perspective and ecosystem players’ perspective), there will be a panel discussion to focus on specific applications of AI on the computing continuum (in particular, AI at the edge) where pitches will be provided by the EU-funded projects working on the topic.

These outputs will be particularly valuable for CISERO, offering preliminary recommendations to address the challenges of cloud and edge integration and highlighting key remaining gaps. The legacy of UNLOCK-CEI could serve as a foundational element for creating the CISERO’s sustainability roadmap, which will support the IPCEI-CIS work in ensuring widespread adoption of next-generation technologies and cloud-to-edge solutions across Europe.