Aruba and Opiquad

Partner Presentations – Aruba and Opiquad

📅 June 4, 2025

This session featured presentations by Aruba and Opiquad, both playing key roles in enabling sovereign, federated, and open-source-aligned cloud infrastructure in Europe.

Aruba Presentation Summary – Marco Mangiulli

🏢 Company Overview

• Founded in 1994, fully family-owned, entered the market in 2000 with Aruba.it
• One of Italy’s largest cloud and data center providers
• Offers cloud computing, eIDAS-certified trust services, and secure email solutions

🏢 Data Centers and Trust Services

• Major data campus in Bergamo (near Milan), plus facilities in Florence and Rome
• Certified as a Trust Service Provider under eIDAS, supporting trusted data spaces in Europe

🌐 Open Source and Cloud-Native Innovation

• Supports Liqo, an open-source Kubernetes-native multi-cluster federation project:

  • Offloads workloads across clusters (on-prem/cloud) transparently
  • Enables GPU sharing, edge inference, and geographic placement
  • Used in production and integrates with Eclipse Dataspace Components (EDC)

• EuropaCube, a spin-off initiative, collaborates with universities on open-source and cloud-native innovation

Opiquad Presentation Summary

Speakers: Enrico Corneo, Fulvio Cazzanti & Ernesto Colombo

🌍 Initiative Context

• Founding member of the Fulcrum Project, a federated cloud initiative
• Enables interoperability and market collaboration between European cloud service providers (CSPs)
• Addresses the growing technology gap between hyperscalers and local cloud providers

🧱 Project Architecture & Strategy

• Built on Fulcrum Core (Apache 2.0-licensed open source), enabling:

  • Federation via agents and core gateways
  • Integration with Gaia-X and iSHARE trust frameworks

• Uses CEM (Computational Exchange Market) to allow CSPs to exchange:

  • Compute
  • Networking
  • Services
    …under a wholesale-only model

• Supports:

  • Multi-cloud orchestration
  • Decentralized infrastructure
  • Seamless hosting of EDC and iSHARE agents

🔭 Vision

• Empower local cloud providers to support sovereign, edge-enabled, compliant data spaces
• Enable federated ecosystems out-of-the-box for SMEs
• Strong focus on commercial interoperability as well as technical integration