Europe’s cloud landscape is at a critical juncture, with over 75% of the market controlled by non-European providers, primarily from countries like the USA and China. This raises pressing concerns about data sovereignty, security, and compliance with foreign regulations, all of which impact European businesses and citizens. Currently, these external players significantly influence how Europe utilizes cloud technologies, shaping the continent’s digital future. However, ensuring Europe’s leadership in data-driven industries requires developing a secure, high-performance cloud infrastructure that integrates both centralized cloud services and edge computing. The NOUS Project is a bold initiative aligned with the European Strategy for Data, aiming to create a framework for a uniquely European cloud service. This vision includes leveraging the continent’s high-performance computing (HPC) capabilities while addressing specific challenges relevant to the EU economy, such as secure data sharing and interoperability. Rather than competing directly with global cloud giants like Microsoft Azure or Amazon AWS, NOUS is designed to offer a blueprint for an interconnected European cloud ecosystem, paving the way for the Next Generation Cloud that ensures Europe’s digital sovereignty.

Building the Future of Edge Computing by exploring the NOUS Project.

The NOUS Project represents a groundbreaking European initiative aimed at revolutionizing cloud computing by integrating cutting-edge technologies, including edge devices, supercomputers, and even quantum computers. With the goal of developing a flexible, powerful Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) cloud provider, NOUS will offer unprecedented computational power and data storage resources. Through its use of decentralization and edge computing, NOUS will harness a wide range of devices and networks to meet Europe’s growing demand for large-scale data processing.

At its core, NOUS is designed to enable a seamless blend of computational resources from the edge to the cloud, making it possible for a variety of devices, from Internet of Things (IoT) sensors to high-performance computing (HPC) clusters and quantum computers, to be part of the same computational ecosystem. NOUS aims to push Europe to the forefront of cloud services by providing next-generation infrastructure that is not only flexible and scalable but also sustainable and open source.

The project comprises three essential components:

1. Computational Components: These handle heavy processing tasks, using advanced computing techniques to achieve significant efficiency gains.
2. Edge Components: These connect edge devices, such as IoT sensors, actuators, and various connected devices, with the computational framework.
3. Data Storage Components: These are responsible for managing and storing the vast amounts of data handled by NOUS, ensuring seamless accessibility and collaboration.

NOUS focuses on delivering real-world impact through:

• Industry-Relevant Use Cases: NOUS tests its technologies in four real-world scenarios, addressing specific challenges faced by industry leaders in different operational domains;
  
  Energy: NOUS supports two significant applications in the energy sector. First, it enables energy prediction by processing historical and real-time data from energy and weather sensors to predict power consumption, generation, and optimal market prices. This process, currently human-intensive, could achieve greater accuracy and cost-efficiency with NOUS automation. Secondly, it manages the energy data lifecycle, providing insightful reports on customer, supplier, and production metrics that aid executives in strategic decision-making.
  
  Connected transport: NOUS aims to improve connected vehicle capabilities by harnessing data from roadside and in-vehicle cameras. Through a network of IoT devices and edge servers, NOUS will facilitate real-time location and movement data sharing among cars and road users, enhancing safety and responsiveness in urban areas. The system will accurately track moving entities, with particular attention to pedestrians and vulnerable users, and will provide real-time data to vehicles and road users while prioritizing privacy protections.
  
  Crisis management hub: NOUS platform will enhance CRIMSON, a European crisis management solution, by providing advanced data lifecycle management. This improvement ensures robust data access and traceability for large-scale crisis situations involving thousands of users from multiple organizations, thus enhancing collaboration, data accuracy, and operational effectiveness during major emergencies.
  
  Science data: NOUS will empower scientific research by streamlining data lifecycle management and enabling efficient AI applications. The platform will leverage AI across the entire scientific research and discovery lifecycle—from related work discovery and predictive modeling to accelerated experiments, cost reduction, and enhanced multi-scale analysis—to streamline research processes and shorten publication timelines. This capability is especially impactful in research settings with heavy data and computation demands, promoting both speed and quality in scientific discovery.

• Decentralized Data Processing: By enabling computations on edge devices close to data sources, NOUS significantly reduces latency, ensuring faster insights and real-time decision-making for critical applications.
• Open-Source Innovation: The NOUS architecture will be open source, allowing companies and organizations to adopt and customize the platform, fostering broader technological innovation.
• Interoperability and Collaboration: Through partnerships with initiatives like Gaia-X, FIWARE, and EOSC, NOUS enhances collaboration, ensuring seamless data sharing and integration across platforms, further expanding its industrial reach.

ITML’s Role in NOUS.

ITML leads the design of edge computing architectures that integrate with traditional cloud services. Key objectives include: (1) Distributed Architectures: Developing systems that work seamlessly with cloud infrastructures, forming the backbone of NOUS’s cloud solutions. (2) Edge Computing Optimization: Utilizing FastFlow to enhance parallel application processing, reducing latency in data-heavy tasks. (3) Federated Learning: Advancing decentralized machine learning on edge devices, improving resource usage and real-time decision-making.

NOUS is more than just a technical achievement—it’s a vision for a decentralized, interconnected future where computational power can be accessed and utilized from virtually anywhere. As the project progresses, it will continue to drive innovation in cloud computing, edge technologies, and AI, making a significant impact on how Europe processes and handles data.

Find more information about the project: https://nous-project.eu/