Italian academia and industry collaborate on 8RA, part of the Important Project of Common European Interest or IPCEI programme
Italian industry and research are teaming up in a European Union-funded digital policy project. Politecnico di Torino, Fondazione Bruno Kessler, ENEA, with Engineering, Fincantieri, Reply, TIM and Tiscali are to create a shared testing environment to improve the outcomes of 8RA. This project is part of the Important Project of Common European Interest (IPCEI) programme.
The project is intended to:
• promote the interoperability and integration of cloud offerings in Europe
• increase public and private investments in edge and cloud technologies, and
• help new companies enter the market to expand the ecosystem.
A little bit of history
In December 2023, the European Commission authorised implementing the first IPCEI project. It focused on the technologies needed to build a European value chain for cloud infrastructure and services (CIS). It stumped up €1.2 billion across Europe, about €409 million of which was allocated to Italy.
The 8RA work in Italy is designed to help Italian and international companies experiment with and integrate technological solutions for specific sectors. For example, leveraging the edge platforms developed by the projects’ partners across industrial domains.
The testing environment will provide a shared platform which each partner can use. The platform is integrated with the resources developed by all members of the group. Member can conduct experiments, feasibility studies and validate projects. This collaborative approach aims to optimise efficiency, speed the development of technological solutions and their adoption during future phases of product industrialisation.
Hence this phase of collaboration is the first step towards commercial use of the project’s outcomes, generating a model that can be scaled.