[00:00.000 --> 00:12.840]  Okay, so thank you very much for attending this talk, and obviously thank you for the
[00:12.840 --> 00:18.280]  organizers of the bedroom for accepting the proposal.
[00:18.280 --> 00:27.240]  So that's my name, I'm coming from Upper Nebula Systems, my idea today, I'm coming here not
[00:27.240 --> 00:33.160]  as a competitor of OpenStack, and coming here to talk to you about the work we're doing
[00:33.160 --> 00:43.000]  at the European level, along with other European companies to align the geo-strategic interest
[00:43.000 --> 00:51.360]  of the European Union with what we are actually doing at the open source sector in Europe.
[00:51.360 --> 00:58.080]  So that's my email, and you want to just follow up with any questions after the session
[00:58.080 --> 00:59.080]  today.
[00:59.080 --> 01:05.120]  As I mentioned, apart from being at the part of Open Nebula Systems, I'm also part of the
[01:05.120 --> 01:09.400]  European Alliance for Industrial Data at some cloud, which is an initiative I'll explain
[01:09.400 --> 01:16.680]  later today, or later now, run by the European Commission, and also part of another initiative
[01:16.680 --> 01:24.960]  we call sovereign ads, which I'll explain also in a few minutes time.
[01:24.960 --> 01:31.440]  So just to bring you some ideas, I'm sure most of you are already familiar with some
[01:31.440 --> 01:38.480]  of the concepts and the strategy, let's say, behind what we're doing right now at the European
[01:38.480 --> 01:47.120]  level. We've mentioned before, and you're perfectly aware of the fact that the cloud
[01:47.120 --> 01:56.800]  market in Europe is, I wouldn't say broken, but it's not balanced at least, let's say.
[01:56.800 --> 02:03.880]  So these are just some figures of the growth of the cloud market in Europe in recent years
[02:03.880 --> 02:10.320]  and how the share of European cloud providers has evolved over time.
[02:10.320 --> 02:16.920]  So what we basically see is that the market is growing enormously, but the share of the
[02:16.920 --> 02:21.440]  European cloud providers is actually declining. So all that business and all that value is
[02:21.440 --> 02:29.440]  being generated by also part of the, also through the pandemic to cloud computing, that is mostly
[02:29.440 --> 02:33.080]  benefiting hyperscalers.
[02:33.080 --> 02:38.800]  So also you're perfectly aware of this. So we are now witnessing this kind of change
[02:38.800 --> 02:45.320]  of paradigm. So we're moving away from the kind of cloud centralized model to a more
[02:45.320 --> 02:51.880]  decentralized approach, this kind of, this shift of paradigm between cloud computing
[02:51.880 --> 02:57.600]  and edge computing that most of you, I'm sure, you're aware of.
[02:57.600 --> 03:02.400]  And we know, we all know it comes with a number of benefits. We're talking about deployment
[03:02.400 --> 03:07.240]  of applications, ultra low level, ultra low latency applications, improving user experience.
[03:07.240 --> 03:12.920]  Think about sectors like online gaming or healthcare. I mean, there are a number of
[03:12.920 --> 03:18.640]  functional advantages to this, but from a European perspective, there's also a key element
[03:18.640 --> 03:24.560]  in moving away from cloud computing, a centralized cloud computing model dominated by hyperscalers
[03:24.560 --> 03:31.240]  to a decentralized edge computing model in which other companies have a say.
[03:31.240 --> 03:37.680]  And that is to also foster here in Europe a new ecosystem of infrastructure providers
[03:37.680 --> 03:42.880]  that can bring some balance to that market. So we are assuming that the cloud market is
[03:42.880 --> 03:49.240]  dominated by hyperscalers, non-EU companies, that's, honestly, that's unlikely to change.
[03:49.240 --> 03:54.000]  What we can do is leverage this shift, this new paradigm of edge computing, where we know
[03:54.000 --> 03:57.040]  there are going to be a number of demands for this new infrastructure that doesn't exist
[03:57.040 --> 04:02.040]  yet, or this technology that doesn't exist yet, to bring some balance to that market
[04:02.040 --> 04:06.080]  and allow a smaller companies in Europe, for instance, to build their own infrastructure
[04:06.080 --> 04:11.040]  offering, bring that to the public with these new platforms, new technologies, hopefully
[04:11.040 --> 04:15.080]  based on open source, as I will explain in a second, and bring some balance to the market
[04:15.080 --> 04:20.760]  that's now heavily, heavily unbalanced. And to the point that we all agree and also the
[04:20.760 --> 04:30.960]  commission that we call it a market failure. So it is so complicated, so unbalanced, that
[04:30.960 --> 04:35.640]  now it's very difficult for a new company to get into this market and actually survive
[04:35.640 --> 04:41.160]  against these big players. Okay. This is especially relevant in Europe
[04:41.160 --> 04:47.920]  because we have a powerful tool here, which is the telecom sector. And as I explained
[04:47.920 --> 04:51.360]  in a second, many of the initiatives that are taking place now in Europe, they rely
[04:51.360 --> 04:56.400]  or they hope that the telecom sector in Europe will come together and will help to build
[04:56.400 --> 05:02.240]  this alternative edge infrastructure that we'll be able to bring and offer an alternative
[05:02.240 --> 05:07.840]  to hyperscalers. We need to get the telecoms involved and that also means we have to fight
[05:07.840 --> 05:12.120]  sometimes from the open source perspective, but in general, for this new change of paradigm,
[05:12.120 --> 05:18.200]  we have to fight against the temptation in some companies in Europe to align their priorities
[05:18.200 --> 05:24.680]  or get some agreements with hyperscalers to speed up the deployment of edge infrastructure
[05:24.680 --> 05:33.160]  in the market. But we all agree that this might come with some risks in the midterm.
[05:33.160 --> 05:40.280]  I think we all agree on that. So I'm going to explain today what we are doing at the
[05:40.280 --> 05:43.560]  European Alliance for Industrial Data, Edge and Cloud and other initiatives that we're
[05:43.560 --> 05:50.680]  moving and promoting from the European open source sector. The main challenge here, if
[05:50.680 --> 05:54.360]  you think about what the future is going to be or what kind of challenges we're going
[05:54.360 --> 05:58.720]  to have in the future, in the near future, I mean, obviously there are many technical
[05:58.720 --> 06:03.160]  challenges and political challenges as well. A basic one, which we still don't have an
[06:03.160 --> 06:09.880]  answer for that, is how we're going to manage if by the end of the decade we actually have
[06:09.880 --> 06:14.560]  tens of thousands of edge nodes across the continent, how we're going to manage all
[06:14.560 --> 06:20.240]  that infrastructure, how are we going to manage thousands of edge nodes with different architectures
[06:20.240 --> 06:25.960]  from different brands, from all of those managed by hundreds, potentially hundreds
[06:25.960 --> 06:31.560]  of different infrastructure providers. That's the whole idea. So how we bring all this new
[06:31.560 --> 06:36.560]  emerging infrastructure together, how we build the tools for a user, for a customer to actually
[06:36.560 --> 06:40.360]  leverage all this new infrastructure that's still to come, and how to make that in a way
[06:40.360 --> 06:47.200]  that doesn't bring us again to a new scenario of vendor locking. So how can we make sure
[06:47.200 --> 06:50.960]  that all these workloads can move freely from one place to another, how can we automate
[06:50.960 --> 06:56.160]  all these deployments, how to make this really easy for people to actually use these thousands
[06:56.160 --> 07:00.240]  of edge nodes that will be available in the market here in Europe, hopefully in a few
[07:00.240 --> 07:04.360]  years' time. So that's a very specific technical challenge that we have to solve right now
[07:04.360 --> 07:09.360]  and we have to decide how we fix that and whether we want to fix that as Europeans or we want
[07:09.360 --> 07:15.720]  to again rely on non-European organizations and companies to do this for us, which is
[07:15.720 --> 07:20.400]  very comfortable, but then at some point we realize we don't have the skills in Europe
[07:20.400 --> 07:30.400]  to take over these projects if something happens. So I talk about the alignment. So there is
[07:30.400 --> 07:37.120]  a gradual alignment and sometimes quite explicit from what kind of the signals we get from
[07:37.120 --> 07:42.960]  the commission in this case and what the industry as a whole in Europe is doing, but specifically
[07:42.960 --> 07:49.960]  the European open source technology providers. So there are some very clear declarations
[07:49.960 --> 07:56.000]  from top EU figures about the need to achieve this kind of technological sovereignty in
[07:56.000 --> 08:03.520]  some way or another, trying to coexist with hyperscalers but hopefully creating some alternative
[08:03.520 --> 08:10.840]  scenario for Europe. Happily there are also quite explicit declarations on the role that
[08:10.840 --> 08:15.720]  open source is expected to play in all this and there is a commitment to do this and I'm
[08:15.720 --> 08:20.960]  happy to say that the discussions we have within the alliance to define these technology
[08:20.960 --> 08:24.640]  priorities and these co-investment priorities, they are quite well aligned with the fact
[08:24.640 --> 08:30.280]  that these technologies have to be open source and open source is the way to mobilize this
[08:30.280 --> 08:35.320]  collaboration between different companies in Europe. Obviously that doesn't mean proprietary
[08:35.320 --> 08:38.880]  software is not going to be there because it has to be there and it's the base of some
[08:38.880 --> 08:45.120]  business models out there, but open source is going to play a key role in all this. Again
[08:45.120 --> 08:50.160]  we see this aligned with what we've read from the commission through a number of documents
[08:50.160 --> 08:54.520]  that I'm sure you are familiar with and also with declarations from people like Commissioner
[08:54.520 --> 09:02.960]  Thierry Wirthon. As I mentioned before, one of the practical challenges is how we believe
[09:02.960 --> 09:09.640]  what the digital decade strategy says will have by the end of this decade thousands
[09:09.640 --> 09:14.960]  of notes across Europe, how are we going to manage this infrastructure? What's the technology
[09:14.960 --> 09:19.480]  that's going to allow new infrastructure providers to offer this to their customers? So that
[09:19.480 --> 09:26.440]  technology doesn't necessarily exist right now. That technology in any case we think
[09:26.440 --> 09:31.920]  should be European if we want to extend this concept of sovereignty down to the technology
[09:31.920 --> 09:41.360]  stack and just leave that at the data level or at the cloud provider level.
[09:41.360 --> 09:48.300]  We see also in the reviewed industrial strategy from the commission that the role that edge
[09:48.300 --> 09:52.320]  computing is expected to play in this, in all this, in this data processing that's moving
[09:52.320 --> 09:59.320]  away gradually quite rapidly. Sometimes from a centralized cloud to the edge, we're going
[09:59.320 --> 10:03.320]  to use that to actually bring some balance to the market. So make sure that European
[10:03.320 --> 10:09.320]  companies have something to say in that and the model doesn't replicate again the kind
[10:09.320 --> 10:14.760]  of oligopoly structure we have in the cloud market. So that's the role of edge computing
[10:14.760 --> 10:19.600]  and that's also increasingly the role that open source is perceived or expected to play
[10:19.600 --> 10:25.040]  in bringing different companies together to build this in the long term and maintain the
[10:25.040 --> 10:29.920]  whole thing running because obviously we can't really say things but we need a long-term
[10:29.920 --> 10:34.560]  commitment from the European industry not just to consume technologies but also system
[10:34.560 --> 10:39.200]  integrators as well, not just to consume technologies and sell them and resell them but also maintain
[10:39.200 --> 10:43.000]  them in the long term. That's one of the main challenges we'll have.
[10:43.000 --> 10:50.120]  The European Alliance for Industrial Data, Edge and Cloud, that's one of the steps, one
[10:50.120 --> 10:55.280]  of the initiatives that the commission has put in place in which the European industry
[10:55.280 --> 11:00.480]  is playing a leading role here. So it comes back from a declaration from Member States,
[11:00.480 --> 11:07.880]  the commitment to support these new technologies, cloud edge technologies. If you read this
[11:07.880 --> 11:12.560]  original declaration which they committed to expanding all this transformation around
[11:12.560 --> 11:18.880]  10 billion euros, I don't think we'll get that much but it's, as explained later, quite
[11:18.880 --> 11:23.800]  decent amount of money involved in all this but we see even in this declaration there
[11:23.800 --> 11:29.480]  are already some references to at least something that sounds a bit like open source something,
[11:29.480 --> 11:37.240]  the open source standards, whatever that is but still it's good to see it's in there somehow.
[11:37.240 --> 11:44.520]  So the Alliance was born in 2021, there was an initial publication of an industrial technology
[11:44.520 --> 11:49.640]  roadmap from a number of European companies at the CEO level. It was then launched at
[11:49.640 --> 11:54.920]  the end of 2021 by Commissioner Thierry Breton and I'm happy to say that by the end of February
[11:54.920 --> 12:02.240]  probably we'll be in good condition to publish the updated version of this technology roadmap
[12:02.240 --> 12:06.800]  with all the technology priorities that have been identified and deployment priorities that
[12:06.800 --> 12:13.080]  have been identified in Europe from the industry perspective but also in alignment with the
[12:13.080 --> 12:21.360]  division of the European Commission. The Alliance brings companies, private companies,
[12:21.360 --> 12:26.160]  European, only European companies, Member States and then also a number of experts are
[12:26.160 --> 12:31.560]  involved in this, in these discussions. We had our first physical general assembly here
[12:31.560 --> 12:37.600]  in Brussels in early December, it was quite successful. The idea is again as I mentioned
[12:37.600 --> 12:46.760]  align and identify these investment needs, these priorities, how to bring together the
[12:46.760 --> 12:51.000]  expectations and the needs and the potential of the industry in Europe with what the Commission
[12:51.000 --> 12:58.440]  is actually expecting or their vision, what Europe needs in coming years and these challenges.
[12:58.440 --> 13:03.400]  Right now there are three working groups, one of them is for Member States. This is
[13:03.400 --> 13:09.920]  mainly people involved in discussions on procurement. So they're looking at how to,
[13:09.920 --> 13:17.760]  from a procurement perspective, help European companies and cloud providers in daily business
[13:17.760 --> 13:22.600]  with the administration in different countries. The main question we get from them is should
[13:22.600 --> 13:29.840]  we restrict contracts to only European companies and it's very tempting to say yes but personally
[13:29.840 --> 13:36.280]  I will say you take the decision, I'm not, I'm just a company, that's something for
[13:36.280 --> 13:40.520]  you to decide. Obviously that will benefit us but I mean discussions are more complex
[13:40.520 --> 13:48.400]  but that's one of the topics that keeps coming up many times.
[13:48.400 --> 13:51.840]  And then there are two working groups for industry, one of them is the cloud edge working
[13:51.840 --> 13:58.960]  group that we chair along with another two companies with CapGermany and SAP. And then
[13:58.960 --> 14:04.760]  there's a specific working group for everything that has to do with cloud for defence and
[14:04.760 --> 14:09.720]  aeronautics sector. Which I'm happy to say some of you were earlier this morning in this
[14:09.720 --> 14:15.280]  debate I had with Gael from Eclipse Foundation. It was striking for me personally to see all
[14:15.280 --> 14:19.640]  these people coming from the defence industry saying that they want to use open source.
[14:19.640 --> 14:27.200]  So the internal debate is not about proprietary source or open source, they want to use open
[14:27.200 --> 14:32.280]  source, they just need help to make sure that they can use open source under the very specific
[14:32.280 --> 14:39.200]  restrictions they have in this sector. So I think that's a good news for everyone.
[14:39.200 --> 14:43.960]  So the Alliance, not all the logos here because it's an old version but as you see some of
[14:43.960 --> 14:48.880]  the main actors in the European industry as a whole not just technology providers but
[14:48.880 --> 14:54.800]  people from other sectors as well contributing to this, cloud providers as well. There was
[14:54.800 --> 15:00.440]  as I mentioned the first version of this document released in 2021 and we'll have that released
[15:00.440 --> 15:05.920]  in probably end of February. So one of the ideas is also for those of you who are familiar
[15:05.920 --> 15:10.360]  with all the different programmes that the commission has in place, things like Horizon
[15:10.360 --> 15:17.760]  Europe or Digital Europe or the SEV, to make sure that from industry we feed the commission
[15:17.760 --> 15:22.960]  with what's actually the challenges and the needs we have in terms of advancing all these
[15:22.960 --> 15:28.160]  technologies for cloud and edge and to make sure that the new calls and the new actions
[15:28.160 --> 15:32.400]  under these programmes are aligned with what we actually from the industry identify. So
[15:32.400 --> 15:40.240]  it's like giving a quick channel to give feedback to the commission to what these topics could
[15:40.240 --> 15:46.000]  be in terms of helping us also advance that. So that's the structure of the Alliance. I'm
[15:46.000 --> 15:54.320]  also here to invite all of you if you come from a European company and your business
[15:54.320 --> 15:59.840]  is relevant to cloud and I guess that's why you're here right now. There's an open process
[15:59.840 --> 16:04.720]  to join, it goes through the European Commission, you can join the Alliance, you can join the
[16:04.720 --> 16:09.400]  different working groups and participate. Maybe it's a bit not too late for this new
[16:09.400 --> 16:13.320]  version but there will be new versions and new working groups during the rest of the
[16:13.320 --> 16:20.360]  year and it's a long-term commitment from these companies to participate in this.
[16:20.360 --> 16:30.640]  So that's what the European Commission side has to do. In the meantime, from the more
[16:30.640 --> 16:36.160]  specifically from the open source, from the European open source industry, we've also
[16:36.160 --> 16:43.120]  been working in having some more cooperation and collaboration among ourselves. In 2021
[16:43.120 --> 16:50.320]  we launched an informal initiative or community called Sovereign Edge. It's about bringing
[16:50.320 --> 16:56.320]  together European open source technology providers that have some, they develop some technologies
[16:56.320 --> 17:01.560]  or we develop some technologies in Europe that are relevant for edge computing and this
[17:01.560 --> 17:06.400]  change of paradigm and we think it makes sense to get closer to each other and get to know
[17:06.400 --> 17:11.440]  each other a bit better and integrations and all that and going together to some of these
[17:11.440 --> 17:16.160]  projects that will be coming up in the near future.
[17:16.160 --> 17:22.640]  So we've started with an informal community of European open source companies. We produce
[17:22.640 --> 17:27.840]  software and we already have some level of integration among ourselves. The objective
[17:27.840 --> 17:33.160]  is at some point to offer an alternative stack of European open source technologies for public
[17:33.160 --> 17:39.720]  administrations and companies and system integrators. Also with making sure that we have connections
[17:39.720 --> 17:45.080]  with all the European relevant European cloud providers to offer at least an alternative
[17:45.080 --> 17:53.000]  that goes beyond data and cloud. It also covers the technology that sustains all this.
[17:53.000 --> 18:03.080]  We launched this as I mentioned in 2021 informally. At the end of 2021, I'm quite proud of this.
[18:03.080 --> 18:06.680]  We didn't get this money but I'm quite proud of this because this was the first time the
[18:06.680 --> 18:13.240]  European open source industry came together to apply and submit a Horizon Europe project
[18:13.240 --> 18:18.640]  to the commission. We didn't get this money but it was a very nice experience to try to
[18:18.640 --> 18:25.840]  bring people who have never ever considered to go into a research or innovation project,
[18:25.840 --> 18:32.760]  a European project coming together and preparing this proposal. As you know, it's a lot of work.
[18:32.760 --> 18:39.440]  Finally we got the second time. This is the COVNIC project. It has started now in January.
[18:39.440 --> 18:45.560]  We coordinate this project with a number of other organizations involved. It's going
[18:45.560 --> 18:51.760]  to be running for three years. I'm happy to say this is the actual implementation of this
[18:51.760 --> 18:56.560]  initial collaboration between European open source providers and their research and innovation
[18:56.560 --> 19:02.000]  ecosystem in Europe to produce some technology together and respond to some of these calls
[19:02.000 --> 19:09.680]  from the Horizon Europe program. Finally, just to finish, a very quick introduction to another
[19:09.680 --> 19:17.560]  initiative that's now ongoing, which is the important European interest for next generation
[19:17.560 --> 19:24.680]  cloud infrastructure and services. It says for friends. We've been preparing this for
[19:24.680 --> 19:32.880]  what? A couple of years or so. This goes through the next generation funding. It's led by
[19:32.880 --> 19:38.280]  Germany and France with heavy support from the commission. In total it's 12 member states
[19:38.280 --> 19:42.120]  are going to mobilize funding from the commission, I mean from European funding through their
[19:42.120 --> 19:50.640]  national budgets, the state aid is called, to set up this huge project for clouded continuum
[19:50.640 --> 19:55.440]  and at different levels. We have, I cannot disclose the companies, the specific companies,
[19:55.440 --> 20:01.040]  but it's European industry, telecommunication companies, software developers coming together
[20:01.040 --> 20:08.480]  to, cloud providers coming together to build a whole stack of the technologies on the advanced
[20:08.480 --> 20:15.440]  services we need for infrastructure applications and data. So it's really exciting. It will
[20:15.440 --> 20:21.200]  cover a number of challenges. We won't go into the details here, but it will be available
[20:21.200 --> 20:27.680]  on these slides. But yeah, things, big topics like interoperability, portability, I mean
[20:27.680 --> 20:32.360]  meta orchestration across different providers, avoiding vendor locking and managing all this
[20:32.360 --> 20:36.520]  huge heterogeneous infrastructure that we expect to be in Europe in the coming years.
[20:36.520 --> 20:42.840]  This is going to run, we pass all the tests and all the questions from the DJ competition
[20:42.840 --> 20:49.280]  and the rest of the commission. It will start hopefully this year, the second semester or
[20:49.280 --> 20:57.200]  so. It will be running for five years. Yeah, that's my personal opinion, but I think the
[20:57.200 --> 21:01.920]  components that we are building or will be building in this project, they have the potential
[21:01.920 --> 21:08.040]  to actually become, you'll see when this is published, the equivalent to the semiconductor
[21:08.040 --> 21:13.480]  or the hydrogen epsi project that are already approved. But I think the open source that
[21:13.480 --> 21:17.600]  we'll be producing here hopefully will have the potential to become the probably largest
[21:17.600 --> 21:25.120]  open source project in Europe in the coming years. So stay in touch because we'll need
[21:25.120 --> 21:33.920]  help. And also an invitation for you to follow this new project that we are starting now
[21:33.920 --> 21:44.760]  under the Horizon Europe program. Thank you.