To realise the green and digital transition, Europe needs to step up its investments in IoT and connectivity, facilitate data access and data services across key industrial sectors like automotive, energy, buildings, agriculture etc., in particular invest in energy-efficient edge nodes and increase the capacity of its data infrastructure at cloud and at edge level. IoT and edge computing will play a significant role in the future of our businesses, economy and society, especially while keeping data at the edge and making decisions at a local level. This gives us an advantage in global emergencies like the energy crisis, or natural disasters caused by climate change. Creating this CEI environment—a computing continuum of data collection, storage and processing from edge to cloud—will be an essential component of a globally competitive, secure and dynamic data-agile economy in Europe. Europe has the opportunity to shape this technological paradigm and create its role as a key player in the worldwide CEI ecosystem and further progress towards digital autonomy and economic resiliency.
To seize the opportunity, it is crucial to tackle central open points for the edge paradigm shift. While, on one hand, collaborative work is needed in terms of a common CEI reference architecture, identification of relevant open-source building blocks and common use of an edge taxonomy, there is also the crucial need to fully understand the needs and requirements of European industrial adopters, the evolution of a European CEI ecosystem and industrial market trends to ensure the alignment of technological solutions with the economic opportunities. The formation of an integrated European CEI value chain where there is an established dialogue among the key stakeholders (technology providers, infrastructure providers, system integrators, end-users, etc.) is an important step to facilitate this edge paradigm shift. This should be aligned with advancements in Europe in terms of design principles for Data Spaces, legal data frameworks such as the AI Act, the Digital Governance Act and/or the Data Act, and strategic initiatives such as Chips JU (including KDT and EPOSS).
The event is meant to dive into sectoral applications and use cases which have been showcased by industrial partners in the CEI cluster, highlight industrial success stories originated from the Meta-OS projects, which are well embedded into the final project results, the value chain analysis behind key edge application and services and impact assessment made., which is impact and synergistic efforts as well as the success stories of Meta-OS projects paving the way towards Large scale pilots supported under the Horizon Europe Work Programme 2024. The event is an ancillary initiative to the AIOTI days on the 24th and 25th of September 2024.
EGI Senior Advisor Mark Dietrich takes part in Session 1: Results and impact demand side with a presentation on CEI Market pathways and insights and by taking part in the panel discussion Reflections on Market insights and industrial practices.
