Italy leader of the first project of common European interest on cloud and edge computing

Brussels – In the first decisive project of common European interest on the most advanced technologies, from cloud to edge computing, Italy shows that it is not just standing around. With the European Commission’s go-ahead for the Important Project of Common European Interest (IPCEI) in the field of cloud computing (provision of computing resources over the Internet) and edge computing (computing that is performed on site or near a particular data source), EUR 1.2 billion in state aid has been released, for which Italian companies will play a decisive role, accounting for a quarter of the total of those involved in the 19 highly innovative projects in this sector.

Public funding – which is expected to unlock a further EUR 1.4 billion in private investment – may come directly in the form of state aid from the seven member states involved, which have jointly notified the IPCEI, called ‘Next Generation Cloud Infrastructure and Services’: France, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Hungary and, above all, Italy. Because out of the 19 companies involved, five are Italian, which will spearhead the development of Europe’s first interoperable and openly accessible data processing ecosystem. Tim, Reply, Tiscali, Fincantieri and Engineering Ingegneria Informatica are the companies active in Italy implementing an equal number of projects, which will converge in an open-source architecture capable of providing services in real time and at low latency (i.e. a few milliseconds) from distributed IT resources close to the user, ‘thus reducing the need to transmit large volumes of data to centralised cloud servers’, the EU Commission points out.

The individual projects cover the entire continuum of the cloud edge – from the basic software layer to sector-specific applications – and will stimulate the Union’s digital and green transition with an array of new services for European businesses and citizens, from the energy sector to the maritime or health sector. After the allocation of state aid and the release of private funding, the research, development and first industrial implementation phases will take place between 2023 and 2031, “with varying timeframes depending on the project and the companies involved”. The first result of the important project of common European interest – the open-source reference infrastructure – is expected by the end of 2027. It is also expected that at least one thousand highly qualified direct and indirect jobs will be created during these phases, in addition to those that will be created during the commercialisation phase.

Today’s decision (5 December) “ensures that public support is well targeted and sufficient to enable the project to pursue its ambitious goals, while safeguarding a level playing field and ensuring that strong positive repercussions can be generated across the Union,” commented Competition Commissioner Didier Reynders. Even more enthusiastic was the Internal Market Commissioner, Thierry Breton: ‘This important project of common European interest is key to achieving breakthrough innovations in cloud and edge technologies that meet European requirements for interoperability, data privacy, sustainability and cybersecurity’. The goal, according to cabinet member von der Leyen, is also to “provide the technologies and solutions to achieve the goals of our Digital Decade 2030 Strategy“, in particular the adoption of cloud solutions by 75 per cent of EU enterprises and more than 10 thousand edge nodes across Europe. “Europe will strengthen its innovative leadership in next generation data services,” assures Commissioner Breton