IPCEIs are Important Projects of Common European Interest that represent a significant contribution to economic growth, jobs, the green and digital transition and competitiveness for the Union industry and economy.

IPCEIs make it possible to bring together knowledge, expertise, financial resources, and economic actors throughout the Union and create positive spillover effects to the whole Union.

E2CC is part of the IPCEI Next Generation Cloud Infrastructure and Services IPCEI-CIS. 

The IPCEI-CIS is the key digital policy project aimed at strengthening Europe's digital and technological sovereignty. 12 Member States are currently working together to build a powerful and sustainable first-ever “Multi-Provider Cloud-Edge Continuum”. More than 100 partners in the Europe Union are involved in this project.

As a framework that consolidates the vision, mission, and individual projects of the IPCEI-CIS the participants formed the 8ra-initiative, which plays a central role by uniting the IPCEI-CIS projects under a common vision, ensuring their long-term impact and strengthening Europe’s position in the global market. By fostering collaboration among member states and industry players, 8ra ensures that the IPCEI-CIS projects deliver impactful and sustainable results, helping Europe remain a leader in technological innovation.

The IPCEI-CIS creates a Multi-Provider Cloud-Edge Continuum without being tied to a single provider. In terms of interoperability, portability and scalability, an advanced digital infrastructure is being developed that will significantly revolutionize current offerings on cloud and edge markets, which are dominated by third-party providers. This will enable the seamless integration of a variety of different new data processing solutions in the European Union in just a few years to support novel applications such as autonomous driving.

The Cloud-Edge Continuum refers to the seamless integration of edge and cloud computing to enable new ways and optimised data processing and storage in distributed networks. Depending on their requirements, data and applications are placed at the edge locations (close to the end devices) or in the cloud. This enables faster processing of real-time data at the edge of the network, while fewer time- and security-critical tasks are performed in the cloud. The novel “Cloud-Edge Continuum” is critical for applications where low latency and high speeds are required.

This specific IPCEI is coordinated by French (Ministry of Economics, Finance and Industrial and Digital Sovereignty) and German (DGE and Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action) Public Authorities, with the objective of IPCEI building a multi Provider Cloud Edge Continuum. It is structured in Work Streams (technical frames) that have been defined during the IPCEI construction.

Workstreams have defined deliverables to which each partner will contribute throughs its individual project results.