The ICOS project is now in its final phase, moving decisively towards validation and the release of the final ICOS product.

The Figure at the bottom of this page depicts the ICOS timeline for Use Cases implementation.

Throughout the project, Use Cases have been at the core of ICOS development, brought by consortium partners (4 internal Use Cases listed below) and 25 selected projects through Open Calls to conduct validation trials.

• In‑car Advanced Infotainment & Multimedia Management (IAIMM)
• Agriculture Operational Robotic Platform (AORP)
• Railway Structural Alert Monitoring (RSAM)
• Energy Management & Decision Support System (EMDS)

This collaborative approach allowed to:

• Validate ICOS performance
• Demonstrate the benefits of ICOS in real-world conditions
• Deliver the final ICOS product ready for market adoption

Preparing and Onboarding Use Cases

Since February 2024 (M18), significant progress has been made in developing and onboarding Use Cases into the final ICOS version. A key milestone during this period was the deployment of Use Case applications across both edge devices and cloud infrastructure, enabling flexible, scalable usage across the ICOS continuum.

To accommodate diverse technical setups, project partners focused on refining the ICOS application syntax template, ensuring compatibility and smooth integration with end-user applications.

From November 2024 to February 2025, dedicated workshops supported 4 innternal Use Case teams, enabling:

• Definition of Application Models, formalizing application structure within ICOS
• Implementation of Matchmaking mechanisms, aligning application requirements with available infrastructure dynamically
• Full deployment of applications across Use Case environments, transitioning from development to operational testing

In March 2025, the final ICOS platform was completed and released. Following the full onboarding of Use Cases. Since then, the focus shifted to feature testing within each Use Case, with results to be presented in Deliverable D6.11: Final ICOS Product Release (M36).

Four Use Cases Onboarded for Validation

The four internal Use Cases, engaged since the project’s inception, successfully onboarded onto the ICOS platform, following step-by-step integration guidelines developed by technical partners.

1. Using a testbed hosted by project partners, each Use Case followed a structured deployment and validation process, including:
2. Edge to IoT Onboarding: Deploying the ICOS worker suite on Use Case infrastructure
3. Interface Installation: Using the Command Line Interface for application deployment management
4. Infrastructure Status Monitoring: Verifying visibility and metrics via Grafana dashboards
5. Application Model Definition: Creating ICOS-specific manifests for each Use Case
6. Matchmaking: Aligning deployment requirements with infrastructure resources, manually or automatically
7. Deployment: Creating and running the Use Case application on the ICOS platform
8. Policy Manager Interaction: Defining and validating application-specific policies, a step continuing up to final demos.

For those interested in onboarding details, ICOS documentation is openly available here: 👉 ICOS Integration Guide

What Comes Next

Use Cases are now actively validating ICOS features within operational environments, testing real-world benefits in terms of flexibility, scalability, and simplified application deployment across the Edge-to-Cloud Continuum.

The next steps include continuing the Final Release validation, focusing on:

• Policy Manager with remediation actions
• Dynamic Matchmaking mechanisms
• Graphical User Interface (GUI) functionality

These actions will ensure that ICOS delivers a robust, user-friendly, and policy-compliant platform ready to support the dynamic needs of edge-to-cloud applications.

Stay tuned as we prepare to present these results at the project’s conclusion, showcasing how ICOS empowers Europe’s digital continuum transformation.