EU tech players team up for sovereign Edge cloud in Europe

Eight European technology organizations have teamed up to launch a sovereign Edge cloud platform in Europe dubbed Virt8ra. The testbed platform is a collaboration between Arsys, BIT, the Gdańsk University of Technology, Infobip, Ionos, Kontron, Mondragon Corporation, and Oktawave. It is coordinated by OpenNebula Systems, an open-source cloud and Edge platform.

The project is part of the Important Project of Common European Interest on Next Generation Cloud Infrastructure and Services (IPCEI-CIS) that was approved by the European Commission in December 2023. The Virt8ra initiative is supported by the Spanish Ministry for Digital Transformation and Civil Service through OpenNebula Systems’ ONEnextgen project, and co-funded by the European Union’s NextGenerationEU through the RRF.

Virt8ra currently offers virtual machines and Kubernetes clusters through a single control plane, while allowing applications to be easily deployed, executed, and migrated across different locations and cloud providers. The consortium plans to add more locations and features, eventually becoming a "computing continuum" that will range from 5G cell towers, to cloud providers and data centers.

“The Virt8ra testbed is our first step at Arsys towards the development of the meta-orchestration software that will enable a multi-vendor solution from technology providers across Europe. It is also the kick-off for future cloud-Edge continuum solutions that will boost the European data economy, digital sovereignty, and competitiveness,” said Miguel Martínez Vélez, chief product officer at Arsys.