Okay, so thank you very much for attending this talk, and obviously thank you for the
organizers of the bedroom for accepting the proposal.
So that's my name, I'm coming from Upper Nebula Systems, my idea today, I'm coming here not
as a competitor of OpenStack, and coming here to talk to you about the work we're doing
at the European level, along with other European companies to align the geo-strategic interest
of the European Union with what we are actually doing at the open source sector in Europe.
So that's my email, and you want to just follow up with any questions after the session
today.
As I mentioned, apart from being at the part of Open Nebula Systems, I'm also part of the
European Alliance for Industrial Data at some cloud, which is an initiative I'll explain
later today, or later now, run by the European Commission, and also part of another initiative
we call sovereign ads, which I'll explain also in a few minutes time.
So just to bring you some ideas, I'm sure most of you are already familiar with some
of the concepts and the strategy, let's say, behind what we're doing right now at the European
level. We've mentioned before, and you're perfectly aware of the fact that the cloud
market in Europe is, I wouldn't say broken, but it's not balanced at least, let's say.
So these are just some figures of the growth of the cloud market in Europe in recent years
and how the share of European cloud providers has evolved over time.
So what we basically see is that the market is growing enormously, but the share of the
European cloud providers is actually declining. So all that business and all that value is
being generated by also part of the, also through the pandemic to cloud computing, that is mostly
benefiting hyperscalers.
So also you're perfectly aware of this. So we are now witnessing this kind of change
of paradigm. So we're moving away from the kind of cloud centralized model to a more
decentralized approach, this kind of, this shift of paradigm between cloud computing
and edge computing that most of you, I'm sure, you're aware of.
And we know, we all know it comes with a number of benefits. We're talking about deployment
of applications, ultra low level, ultra low latency applications, improving user experience.
Think about sectors like online gaming or healthcare. I mean, there are a number of
functional advantages to this, but from a European perspective, there's also a key element
in moving away from cloud computing, a centralized cloud computing model dominated by hyperscalers
to a decentralized edge computing model in which other companies have a say.
And that is to also foster here in Europe a new ecosystem of infrastructure providers
that can bring some balance to that market. So we are assuming that the cloud market is
dominated by hyperscalers, non-EU companies, that's, honestly, that's unlikely to change.
What we can do is leverage this shift, this new paradigm of edge computing, where we know
there are going to be a number of demands for this new infrastructure that doesn't exist
yet, or this technology that doesn't exist yet, to bring some balance to that market
and allow a smaller companies in Europe, for instance, to build their own infrastructure
offering, bring that to the public with these new platforms, new technologies, hopefully
based on open source, as I will explain in a second, and bring some balance to the market
that's now heavily, heavily unbalanced. And to the point that we all agree and also the
commission that we call it a market failure. So it is so complicated, so unbalanced, that
now it's very difficult for a new company to get into this market and actually survive
against these big players. Okay. This is especially relevant in Europe
because we have a powerful tool here, which is the telecom sector. And as I explained
in a second, many of the initiatives that are taking place now in Europe, they rely
or they hope that the telecom sector in Europe will come together and will help to build
this alternative edge infrastructure that we'll be able to bring and offer an alternative
to hyperscalers. We need to get the telecoms involved and that also means we have to fight
sometimes from the open source perspective, but in general, for this new change of paradigm,
we have to fight against the temptation in some companies in Europe to align their priorities
or get some agreements with hyperscalers to speed up the deployment of edge infrastructure
in the market. But we all agree that this might come with some risks in the midterm.
I think we all agree on that. So I'm going to explain today what we are doing at the
European Alliance for Industrial Data, Edge and Cloud and other initiatives that we're
moving and promoting from the European open source sector. The main challenge here, if
you think about what the future is going to be or what kind of challenges we're going
to have in the future, in the near future, I mean, obviously there are many technical
challenges and political challenges as well. A basic one, which we still don't have an
answer for that, is how we're going to manage if by the end of the decade we actually have
tens of thousands of edge nodes across the continent, how we're going to manage all
that infrastructure, how are we going to manage thousands of edge nodes with different architectures
from different brands, from all of those managed by hundreds, potentially hundreds
of different infrastructure providers. That's the whole idea. So how we bring all this new
emerging infrastructure together, how we build the tools for a user, for a customer to actually
leverage all this new infrastructure that's still to come, and how to make that in a way
that doesn't bring us again to a new scenario of vendor locking. So how can we make sure
that all these workloads can move freely from one place to another, how can we automate
all these deployments, how to make this really easy for people to actually use these thousands
of edge nodes that will be available in the market here in Europe, hopefully in a few
years' time. So that's a very specific technical challenge that we have to solve right now
and we have to decide how we fix that and whether we want to fix that as Europeans or we want
to again rely on non-European organizations and companies to do this for us, which is
very comfortable, but then at some point we realize we don't have the skills in Europe
to take over these projects if something happens. So I talk about the alignment. So there is
a gradual alignment and sometimes quite explicit from what kind of the signals we get from
the commission in this case and what the industry as a whole in Europe is doing, but specifically
the European open source technology providers. So there are some very clear declarations
from top EU figures about the need to achieve this kind of technological sovereignty in
some way or another, trying to coexist with hyperscalers but hopefully creating some alternative
scenario for Europe. Happily there are also quite explicit declarations on the role that
open source is expected to play in all this and there is a commitment to do this and I'm
happy to say that the discussions we have within the alliance to define these technology
priorities and these co-investment priorities, they are quite well aligned with the fact
that these technologies have to be open source and open source is the way to mobilize this
collaboration between different companies in Europe. Obviously that doesn't mean proprietary
software is not going to be there because it has to be there and it's the base of some
business models out there, but open source is going to play a key role in all this. Again
we see this aligned with what we've read from the commission through a number of documents
that I'm sure you are familiar with and also with declarations from people like Commissioner
Thierry Wirthon. As I mentioned before, one of the practical challenges is how we believe
what the digital decade strategy says will have by the end of this decade thousands
of notes across Europe, how are we going to manage this infrastructure? What's the technology
that's going to allow new infrastructure providers to offer this to their customers? So that
technology doesn't necessarily exist right now. That technology in any case we think
should be European if we want to extend this concept of sovereignty down to the technology
stack and just leave that at the data level or at the cloud provider level.
We see also in the reviewed industrial strategy from the commission that the role that edge
computing is expected to play in this, in all this, in this data processing that's moving
away gradually quite rapidly. Sometimes from a centralized cloud to the edge, we're going
to use that to actually bring some balance to the market. So make sure that European
companies have something to say in that and the model doesn't replicate again the kind
of oligopoly structure we have in the cloud market. So that's the role of edge computing
and that's also increasingly the role that open source is perceived or expected to play
in bringing different companies together to build this in the long term and maintain the
whole thing running because obviously we can't really say things but we need a long-term
commitment from the European industry not just to consume technologies but also system
integrators as well, not just to consume technologies and sell them and resell them but also maintain
them in the long term. That's one of the main challenges we'll have.
The European Alliance for Industrial Data, Edge and Cloud, that's one of the steps, one
of the initiatives that the commission has put in place in which the European industry
is playing a leading role here. So it comes back from a declaration from Member States,
the commitment to support these new technologies, cloud edge technologies. If you read this
original declaration which they committed to expanding all this transformation around
10 billion euros, I don't think we'll get that much but it's, as explained later, quite
decent amount of money involved in all this but we see even in this declaration there
are already some references to at least something that sounds a bit like open source something,
the open source standards, whatever that is but still it's good to see it's in there somehow.
So the Alliance was born in 2021, there was an initial publication of an industrial technology
roadmap from a number of European companies at the CEO level. It was then launched at
the end of 2021 by Commissioner Thierry Breton and I'm happy to say that by the end of February
probably we'll be in good condition to publish the updated version of this technology roadmap
with all the technology priorities that have been identified and deployment priorities that
have been identified in Europe from the industry perspective but also in alignment with the
division of the European Commission. The Alliance brings companies, private companies,
European, only European companies, Member States and then also a number of experts are
involved in this, in these discussions. We had our first physical general assembly here
in Brussels in early December, it was quite successful. The idea is again as I mentioned
align and identify these investment needs, these priorities, how to bring together the
expectations and the needs and the potential of the industry in Europe with what the Commission
is actually expecting or their vision, what Europe needs in coming years and these challenges.
Right now there are three working groups, one of them is for Member States. This is
mainly people involved in discussions on procurement. So they're looking at how to,
from a procurement perspective, help European companies and cloud providers in daily business
with the administration in different countries. The main question we get from them is should
we restrict contracts to only European companies and it's very tempting to say yes but personally
I will say you take the decision, I'm not, I'm just a company, that's something for
you to decide. Obviously that will benefit us but I mean discussions are more complex
but that's one of the topics that keeps coming up many times.
And then there are two working groups for industry, one of them is the cloud edge working
group that we chair along with another two companies with CapGermany and SAP. And then
there's a specific working group for everything that has to do with cloud for defence and
aeronautics sector. Which I'm happy to say some of you were earlier this morning in this
debate I had with Gael from Eclipse Foundation. It was striking for me personally to see all
these people coming from the defence industry saying that they want to use open source.
So the internal debate is not about proprietary source or open source, they want to use open
source, they just need help to make sure that they can use open source under the very specific
restrictions they have in this sector. So I think that's a good news for everyone.
So the Alliance, not all the logos here because it's an old version but as you see some of
the main actors in the European industry as a whole not just technology providers but
people from other sectors as well contributing to this, cloud providers as well. There was
as I mentioned the first version of this document released in 2021 and we'll have that released
in probably end of February. So one of the ideas is also for those of you who are familiar
with all the different programmes that the commission has in place, things like Horizon
Europe or Digital Europe or the SEV, to make sure that from industry we feed the commission
with what's actually the challenges and the needs we have in terms of advancing all these
technologies for cloud and edge and to make sure that the new calls and the new actions
under these programmes are aligned with what we actually from the industry identify. So
it's like giving a quick channel to give feedback to the commission to what these topics could
be in terms of helping us also advance that. So that's the structure of the Alliance. I'm
also here to invite all of you if you come from a European company and your business
is relevant to cloud and I guess that's why you're here right now. There's an open process
to join, it goes through the European Commission, you can join the Alliance, you can join the
different working groups and participate. Maybe it's a bit not too late for this new
version but there will be new versions and new working groups during the rest of the
year and it's a long-term commitment from these companies to participate in this.
So that's what the European Commission side has to do. In the meantime, from the more
specifically from the open source, from the European open source industry, we've also
been working in having some more cooperation and collaboration among ourselves. In 2021
we launched an informal initiative or community called Sovereign Edge. It's about bringing
together European open source technology providers that have some, they develop some technologies
or we develop some technologies in Europe that are relevant for edge computing and this
change of paradigm and we think it makes sense to get closer to each other and get to know
each other a bit better and integrations and all that and going together to some of these
projects that will be coming up in the near future.
So we've started with an informal community of European open source companies. We produce
software and we already have some level of integration among ourselves. The objective
is at some point to offer an alternative stack of European open source technologies for public
administrations and companies and system integrators. Also with making sure that we have connections
with all the European relevant European cloud providers to offer at least an alternative
that goes beyond data and cloud. It also covers the technology that sustains all this.
We launched this as I mentioned in 2021 informally. At the end of 2021, I'm quite proud of this.
We didn't get this money but I'm quite proud of this because this was the first time the
European open source industry came together to apply and submit a Horizon Europe project
to the commission. We didn't get this money but it was a very nice experience to try to
bring people who have never ever considered to go into a research or innovation project,
a European project coming together and preparing this proposal. As you know, it's a lot of work.
Finally we got the second time. This is the COVNIC project. It has started now in January.
We coordinate this project with a number of other organizations involved. It's going
to be running for three years. I'm happy to say this is the actual implementation of this
initial collaboration between European open source providers and their research and innovation
ecosystem in Europe to produce some technology together and respond to some of these calls
from the Horizon Europe program. Finally, just to finish, a very quick introduction to another
initiative that's now ongoing, which is the important European interest for next generation
cloud infrastructure and services. It says for friends. We've been preparing this for
what? A couple of years or so. This goes through the next generation funding. It's led by
Germany and France with heavy support from the commission. In total it's 12 member states
are going to mobilize funding from the commission, I mean from European funding through their
national budgets, the state aid is called, to set up this huge project for clouded continuum
and at different levels. We have, I cannot disclose the companies, the specific companies,
but it's European industry, telecommunication companies, software developers coming together
to, cloud providers coming together to build a whole stack of the technologies on the advanced
services we need for infrastructure applications and data. So it's really exciting. It will
cover a number of challenges. We won't go into the details here, but it will be available
on these slides. But yeah, things, big topics like interoperability, portability, I mean
meta orchestration across different providers, avoiding vendor locking and managing all this
huge heterogeneous infrastructure that we expect to be in Europe in the coming years.
This is going to run, we pass all the tests and all the questions from the DJ competition
and the rest of the commission. It will start hopefully this year, the second semester or
so. It will be running for five years. Yeah, that's my personal opinion, but I think the
components that we are building or will be building in this project, they have the potential
to actually become, you'll see when this is published, the equivalent to the semiconductor
or the hydrogen epsi project that are already approved. But I think the open source that
we'll be producing here hopefully will have the potential to become the probably largest
open source project in Europe in the coming years. So stay in touch because we'll need
help. And also an invitation for you to follow this new project that we are starting now
under the Horizon Europe program. Thank you.