U.S. tech giants dominate the cloud market. This threatens the technological sovereignty, data protection, and innovative capacity of European companies. In the »ApeiroRA« project, the Fraunhofer Institutes for Software and Systems Engineering (ISST) and for Applied and Integrated Security (AISEC) are supporting the software company SAP in securing Europe’s technological and economic independence in the cloud and edge sectors. The partners are developing an open-source blueprint for a European, vendor-neutral cloud-edge infrastructure that guarantees interoperability among different providers.

The digital transformation of European companies and government agencies is increasingly shaped by their dependence on global cloud providers. In the area of cloud infrastructure in particular, U.S. hyperscalers such as Microsoft, Amazon, and Google dominate the market with a 70 percent share. This significantly limits Europe’s technological sovereignty, innovative capacity, and regulatory control. To break free from this dependence and close the digital gap, the European Commission is promoting open-source projects such as SAP’s ApeiroRA, which, through the Apeiro reference architecture, provides key technology components and an open-source blueprint for a European, vendor-neutral cloud edge infrastructure. The project is part of the IPCEI-CIS initiative (Important Project of Common European Interest - Cloud Infrastructure and Services).

The Fraunhofer Institutes ISST and AISEC are providing SAP with technological support to establish a sustainable multi-provider cloud-edge continuum for Europe. To this end, they are drawing on their many years of expertise and building on the groundwork laid by the CCIT (Cluster of Excellence Cognitive Internet Technologies) research cluster, whose research focuses on establishing a sovereign edge-cloud continuum. In addition, they have been working for years on “Data Spaces,” which enable sovereign data exchange between companies. “Fraunhofer is the right partner for us because it consistently combines scientific excellence with strong implementation capabilities. This capability is crucial, especially in the Apeiro project, where we are gradually translating a complex reference architecture into concrete solutions and pilot projects.” The partners complement each other very well in this collaboration: SAP brings industrial application and scalability, while Fraunhofer contributes methodological depth and the structured development of new approaches - and this is precisely what creates the foundation for robust, practical technologies,” says Andreas Schlosser, Apeiro Coordinator for Partnerships & Integrations at SAP SE, highlighting the benefits of the collaboration.

Shift workloads to where they can be handled most efficiently

Heinrich Pettenpohl, Head of the IT Service Providers Division at Fraunhofer ISST: “Europe has fallen behind in the global market for public cloud services. That is not the case in the field of cloud edge computing. That is why the European Commission is pursuing a strategy to promote decentralized, smaller data centers - so-called cloud edges - so that European companies have direct access and can store their data there.” The advantage: Data processing is shifted from central data centers directly to the edge of the network - that is, close to the data source. Such edge cloud data centers can be located anywhere - for example, at the base of a wind turbine tower, at a maintenance depot, or in a production hall. This minimizes latency, conserves bandwidth, and enables real-time analyses, while the cloud continues to serve as central storage and for complex long-term analyses. It also creates a counterbalance to the centralized cloud systems of Amazon and others. The large-scale open-source project ApeiroRA is developing a secure, vendor-neutral European cloud-edge continuum that seamlessly connects central cloud data centers and decentralized cloud edges into a single, intelligent IT infrastructure. It dynamically distributes workloads to where they can be processed most efficiently.

ApeiroRA – Flexible and Interoperable

Fraunhofer’s contribution to ApeiroRA involves the development and prototyping of a scalable, secure, and automated lifecycle management system for cloud and edge services. The tasks include building modular systems for cloud and edge services that can seamlessly operate across different providers and applications, thereby increasing flexibility and interoperability.

To ensure security and compliance, data protection, and regulatory requirements, state-of-the-art security strategies such as Zero Trust and Confidential Computing are implemented. »We are integrating a security architecture into the Apeiro reference architecture that incorporates Zero Trust principles and Confidential Computing to enable secure, interoperable identity and access management, as well as technology-agnostic attestation of workloads in federated multi-provider environments - that is, in IT ecosystems where services, resources, and identities from different providers are seamlessly interconnected«, says Dr. Michael Weiß, a researcher at Fraunhofer AISEC. Instead of using proprietary siloed solutions, independent systems collaborate via open standards and trust relationships (federations), so that they function as a single platform. This is to be achieved, among other things, through the implementation of trusted execution environments, technology-independent integrity verification of software stacks, and a minimalist approach to granting access rights.

Resource Efficiency Through the Use of Digital Twins

Fraunhofer researchers are also working on developing a framework for the comprehensive analysis of resource consumption, for tracking and predicting sustainability metrics, and for generating recommendations for resource-efficient configurations. »By shifting cloud services to locations where energy - or renewable energy - is available, we are making the system sustainable. By using digital twins, we aim to optimize resource consumption and implement sustainable IT configurations«, explains Pettenpohl. Also on the agenda is the development of autonomous fault analysis and AI-supported operations management to reduce administrative overhead and increase efficiency. Andreas Schlosser: »Fraunhofer’s contributions are central: from automated and compliance-ready operating models, through Zero Trust and confidential computing approaches, to new concepts such as digital twins and AI-supported system optimization. This work not only drives technological innovation but, above all, creates verifiable and transferable solutions that enable Europe to achieve greater independence, transparency, and long-term competitiveness«.

The key project results are directly incorporated into the NeoNephos Foundation, which, as part of the Linux Foundation Europe, is dedicated to promoting open-source projects that align with the strategic goals of the EU’s IPCEI-CIS. NeoNephos is thus becoming a key building block for Europe’s independence in the cloud and edge sectors.