We are witnessing a wave of emerging cloud computing technologies and services that empower advanced applications from different vertical sectors, with diverse requirements. Also, there is a movement from top-down designed architectures, applying centralized resource control, towards federations of loosely coupled autonomous or semiautonomous systems, managed by multiple independent actors that are self-organized in a distributed manner. These trends give rise to several fundamental challenges that relate to the application deployment, the support of heterogeneous infrastructures and the provided security.
SERRANO targets the efficient and transparent integration of heterogeneous resources, providing an infrastructure that goes beyond the scope of the “normal” cloud. SERRANO will introduce a novel ecosystem of cloud-based hardware and software technologies. This will enable application-specific service instantiation and optimal customizations, thus supporting highly demanding, dynamic and security-critical applications. The overall orchestration will be performed in a lean, automated, holistic and integrated manner. SERRANO is not only tuned and fully aligned with current trends in the cloud computing sector towards the expansion of cloud infrastructures so as to efficiently integrate edge resources, but it also integrates transparently HPC resources to provide an infrastructure that realizes a true computing continuum.
SERRANO introduces an abstraction layer that transforms the distributed edge, cloud and HPC resources into a single borderless infrastructure, while it also facilitates their automated and cognitive orchestration. It proposes the introduction and evolution of novel key concepts and approaches that aim to close existing technology gaps, towards the realization of advanced infrastructures, able to meet the stringent requirements of future applications and services. It will develop technologies and mechanisms related to security and privacy in distributed computing and storage infrastructures, hardware and software acceleration on cloud and edge, cognitive resource orchestration, dynamic data movement and task offloading between edge/cloud/HPC, transparent application deployment, energy-efficiency, and real-time and zero-touch adaptability.
To highlight the proposed ecosystem’s scientific and technological significance, SERRANO will demonstrate three high impact use cases related to (i) secure cloud and edge storage over a diversity of cloud resources, (ii) fintech by supporting latency-sensitive and safety-critical digital services in the financial sector and (iii) machine anomaly detection in manufacturing for Industry 4.0.