EU to compete with the US in the mobile cloud market

EU funds Flexiant's mobile cloud compute test bed

The European Union is to provide €7m (£5.8m) in funding for a mobile cloud computing initiative that will see it competing with the US in this arena.

The funding comes from the recently upgraded Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) which is the largest funding and research programme in the world and has an ICT element of €1.2bn.

Called Project Optimis, the three-year programme will aim to develop cloud-based mobile applications across the EU and will see a number of mobile operators and vendors involved, including Ericsson, Nokia and Orange. Among the other partners are technology services firm Atos Origin, UK telco BT, German enterprise software giant SAP, Spanish telco Telefónica and a little-known company called Flexiant.

Based just outside Edinburgh, Flexiant’s contribution to the project will be its Extility software technology platform.

Flexiant founder Tony Lucas said: “we were asked by the main organiser of the initiative, Telefónica, to provide part of the infrastructure service used by the project.” He explained that one of the main drivers for the project was to develop an infrastructure to enable the EU to compete with the US, which currently offers more advanced cloud services.

“We are trying to build a configurable, flexible platform-as-a-service layer that would fit on top of the multiple infrastructures of service providers,” added Lucas.

“This would allow them to build scalable applications,” he said.

Extility is a software platform designed to fit over a hosting platform, offering customers a flexible, scaleable cloud computing service.

FP7 recently announced an extra €6.4bn in funding, taking the ICT element of the programme to €1.2bn.

About €600m of the ICT cash is earmarked for technology, including next-generation network and service infrastructures such as cloud computing.