D3.1: Strategy analysis report and Cloud Computing

The European Commission is actively setting priorities for the upcoming Multiannual Financial Framework of the European Union covering the 2021-2027 period. Among the different identified priorities, “A Europe fit for the digital age” explicitly supports digitalisation. Cloud computing, as a fundamental brick of a digital Europe, will play an even stronger role in the European economy and society by embracing core European values, spanning fundamental individual rights to market openness and environmental friendliness. To tackle Europe digitalisation priority, the European Commission defined “A European strategy for data” and “A new Industrial Strategy for Europe”, including a strong focus on data spaces and federated cloud infrastructures.

To support the work on the definition of priorities for the upcoming programmes, this report 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:

1. Effective cloud federation models to stimulate the creation of a European public cloud service market leveraging existing capacities;
2. 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;
3. 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 the 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 Deliverable that updates and consolidates the Green Paper v1.0 released for H-CLOUD Summit in November 2020. The content of this deliverable will be synthesised into version 1.0 of the White Paper, identifying common motivations and use cases, and analysing those use cases in order to structure and prioritise recommended actions intended to accelerate cloud adoption. Version 1.0 of the White Paper will again be distributed to the broader stakeholder community for feedback and consultation, leading to version 2.0 in April 2021 and the final strategic plan by the end of 2021. 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.