Dr Federico Michele Facca, CTO at Martel Innovate, is the project coordinator of the H-CLOUD Coordination and Support Action. He is a strong advocate of Open Source solutions (e.g. OpenStack, Apache Hadoop, Kubernetes, Docker,...) and his expertise covers Cloud Computing architectures and their application to different fields, e.g., Big data, Internet of Things, Network Function Virtualisation Infrastructure. Dr Facca acted as Technical Manager and Chief Architect in different large ICT projects: COIN, Infinity, SemanticGov, SUperhub and XIFI.

He is among the core technical figures in the FIWARE programme, within which he successfully supervised a heterogeneous team of more than 60 engineers from different ICT companies and major European research centres (e.g. Telefonica, Thales, Engineering, etc.) contributing to the FIWARE Lab activities.

Previously, he worked as Area Head in CREATE-NET focusing on Cloud Computing management solutions; before that he was Area Head and Institute Manager at STI Innsbruck, focusing on service-oriented architectures and service middlewares. Dr Facca obtained his Ph.D. in Information Technology and his M.Sc in Computer Science at the Politecnico di Milano.

 

What is H-CLOUD?

H-CLOUD is a European project that coordinates and supports activities for the consolidation and growth of the cloud computing research and innovation community in Europe, bringing together innovators, policymakers, cloud computing research, industry, and users into an open, participatory, and sustainable forum.

The H-CLOUD consortium consists of four partners: Martel Innovate (Switzerland, coordinator), EGI (Netherlands), AcrossLimits (Malta) and IDC (Italy).

Which are the priority areas where H-CLOUD is working on?

H-CLOUD is working on a Strategic Research Innovation and Deployment Agenda for Cloud Computing in Europe that provides recommendations and strategies to guide the future of European cloud services and their market regulations. Within the scope of this activity, a special focus lies on the topics Green Computing, Cloud Edge, and Cloud Federation. 

Can you tell us more about the Horizon Cloud Community?

It is one of H-CLOUD’s main priorities to connect European Cloud stakeholders, increase awareness and collaboration across different stakeholder groups, provide cross-fertilisation opportunities, and stimulate the adoption of research and innovation outputs to ensure technological sovereignty and global competitiveness of Europe.

To that end, we have created a wide set of channels, where Cloud stakeholders can meet. Next to “the usual” channels, such as our H-CLOUD portal, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube, we have established the HORIZON CLOUD Forum, an online community platform where Cloud stakeholders can exchange information and get in touch with each other.

Moreover, we set up a Communication Task Force, where interested people from all Cloud Research and Innovation Actions (RIAs) meet on a monthly basis to exchange information and collaborate.

Finally, we regularly organise a lot of events and meetings, such as our Community Events or our flagship event the Horizon Cloud Summit, during which interested stakeholders can give workshops and present their project outcomes. 

What are the opportunities for H2020 projects to collaborate and create synergies with H-CLOUD? Which kind of support can you provide?

We strongly recommend H2020 Cloud projects to follow our above-mentioned channels and to join the Forum and the Communication Task Force. That way, they will always be on top of all activities and can share their own project updates with us so that we can support them in the further dissemination of their news.

We can support in different ways: Once we receive relevant project news, we usually publish the content on our HORIZON CLOUD portal and spread the word via our social media channels, newsletter, and mailing list.

Moreover, we invite H2020 Cloud projects to actively shape our events, such as the Horizon Cloud Summit and the Community Events.

Can you give us more information on the Open Access book on Cloud computing research that H-CLOUD will launch in 2022?

H-CLOUD is currently curating a book that aims to provide an overview of the state of research related to Cloud Computing in Europe and the recent evolution towards the edge. All H2020 Cloud RIAs and other interested Cloud stakeholders are invited to contribute to the book. The chapters of the book will not present the projects per se, but rather provide an up-to-date view on specific research topics, such as:

  • Modelling resources and applications for computing continuum
  • Decentralised architectures for computing continuum
  • Distributed ledgers for computing continuum
  • Security and privacy for computing continuum
  • Optimisation for computing continuum
  • Monitoring for computing continuum
  • Self-* for computing continuum
  • Data processing in the computing continuum
  • Swarm intelligence
  • Hardware for continuum computing
  • Programming models for computing continuum
  • IoT and computing continuum
  • 5G and computing continuum
  • Sustainability and computing continuum
  • Open-source use and contribution. 

The authors are currently working on the chapters and the target is to have an advanced draft of the chapters by the end of March 2022.

 

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