Innovative Europe

The European Commission’s funding programmes are among the largest and most ambitious in the world. This multi-billion funding will ensure Europe can deliver on environmental, energy and digital initiatives in the coming years. Key to achievement of these goals is the efficient and intelligent use of data.

Overwhelmed by data!

The proliferation of IoT sensors – 41.6 billion foreseen to be connected by 2025 – and related data – 79.4 Zettabytes – paves the way for highly valuable inputs to be generated for various business sectors and government agencies, enabling the delivery of precise and targeted data analysis.

However, being able to extract meaningful insights from this huge amount of raw data represents a huge challenge. It requires a highly distributed and coordinated infrastructure, alongside multi-skilled teams. Building a powerful, fast, secure, and cost-efficient continuum between IoT sensors, edge devices and cloud requires the distribution of data processing between the different layers. In an ideal scenario, data flows from IoT sensors to edge devices, where a first data analysis is performed, and only the remaining data is sent to the cloud for further processing.

Where ICOS steps in

Thanks to Horizon Europe funding, the ICOS project is building a complex compute continuum to solve this problem, based on decentralization and autonomous nodes. Connecting the dots between IoT, edge and cloud instances entails much more than a simple plug-and-play action. From the hardware point of view, such an infrastructure can involve hundreds, even thousands of devices, from IoT sensors to cloud servers and virtual machines. It also implies the use of multiple software pieces which must be carefully linked to each other.

This is where orchestration comes into the picture. Both on the hardware and the software side, a good orchestrator will make sure that data and events flow smoothly from one layer to another, allowing the distribution of data processing layers. Orchestration is key to ensuring both the communication between devices and the deployment of software applications on them, at the edge and in the cloud. Furthermore, edge devices and IoT peripherals can face technical issues or latencies, such as discontinuity in their connection to the network. Orchestration is needed to ensure that data generated is secured and cannot be lost in case of errors.

Reducing complexity

Orchestration is a key but complex process, involving several teams with wide-ranging skillsets, as it involves multiple device communications, and software deployments. To avoid this management complexity, the ICOS project is using parts of Nuvla, SixSq’s edge-to-cloud orchestrator. Nuvla provides a simple way to manage fleets of edge devices and deployments. The technology is a combination of Nuvla.io, an edge-to-cloud remote management platform, and the open-source software NuvlaEdge, as depicted in the diagram below. The software runs directly on the edge device, and enables remote communication with the Nuvla.io platform, from which all devices and applications running can be monitored. The platform also offers the possibility to perform several actions on the edge devices and apps, like software updates or notifications setup.

With Nuvla, the configuration of an edge infrastructure and the deployment of a first app on an edge device takes no more than half a day. After this first step, commissioning and apps deployments on an edge device can be done in minutes. Furthermore, the platform offers a dedicated B2B marketplace from which users can deploy, monitor, and update either third-party apps provided by domain matter experts or their own apps on edge devices. Nuvla brings this crucial IoT-edge-cloud connectivity, enabling the data and control flow between these three layers. Infrastructures can benefit from a secure, scalable, cloud and hardware-agnostic environment to create, manage and monitor their edge devices and deploy their own apps, at scale. The four use cases of the ICOS project will benefit from this simple orchestration tool, to smoothly run the compute continuum.

Capitalizing on funding

Nuvla.io is an excellent example of how funding into technology supports solutions for European government institutions and enterprises. It is born of participation in numerous research projects, both in the framework of Horizon Europe and the European Space Agency. Currently, the tool is being used not only by ICOS but by other projects, from broadcasting to extreme data mining for crisis management, as well as by commercial customers.