Milan Workshop Summary – June 2025 on DCSA

Agenda

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

European Cloud Accelerator Workshop Agenda

📍 Milan – June 4–5, 2025

🗓 Wednesday, June 4

⏰ 10:00 — Welcome / Introductions / Session Objectives

Presenter: Alexis

Kick-off meeting
Get alignment on goals for the two-day workshop

⏰ 10:30 — European Cloud Accelerator Overview / Update

Presenter: Babak — 30 min

Introduction & Attendees

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Participant Introductions

Alexis Corcoran (Microsoft)
Head of Regulatory Strategy for Modernization and Business Planning at Microsoft.
Erich Barnstedt (Microsoft)
Senior Director with over 22 years at Microsoft, specializing in standards.
Eric Samson (Microsoft)
Member of the standards team, focused on data space standardization.
Thomas Obermeyer (Catena-X)
Architect working on the Catena-X data space initiative.

Keynote – Prof. Boris Otto (Fraunhofer ISST)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Summary

Prof. Boris Otto delivered a keynote focused on the essential role of data spaces and trust-based data sharing as foundational elements in Europe’s digital and AI future. His main points included:

Data sharing is not an end, but a mechanism to unlock value across ecosystems.
Emphasized three principles: reuse, fairness (reciprocity), and trust.
Trust must exist in both the participants and the data itself (quality, control, and rights).
Data spaces are the enabling framework for trusted data sharing—built on interoperability, metadata, policies, and governance.
Referenced CEN/CENELEC JTC 25, IDSA, Gaia-X, and ISO 20151 as standardization anchors.
Positioned data spaces across a cloud-edge continuum, from hyperscalers to edge nodes.
Highlighted the importance of basic data objects (e.g., product and organizational metadata) to enable a digital twin of the European market.
Connected data spaces with Europe’s AI ambitions, especially the concept of AI Gigafactories and data labs, where trustful data sharing is a prerequisite for foundation models.

“Data is a treasure, but it only has value if used—and used fairly, transparently, and with trust.”
— Prof. Boris Otto

Intro to Dataspaces

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Speaker: Eric Samson (Microsoft)

Eric Samson introduced foundational data space concepts, focusing on how trust mechanisms reduce risk when sharing data across organizational and technical boundaries.

Key Points

Data value is created through sharing, but the risk increases as data leaves its origin.
Data spaces reduce risk by building trust across three core layers:

Industrial Data Sharing – Erich Barnstedt

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

📅 June 28, 2025 | 🕘 09:22

🔑 Key Takeaways

📘 Digital Product Passport (DPP)

Mandatory from 2027 for all products sold in Europe
Must include data on:
- Recyclability
- Carbon footprint
- Supply chain
- Personnel
Use cases: Battery Passports, Digital Nameplates

🔗 Interoperability Requires 4 Standardized Elements

Interface (e.g., REST / OpenAPI)
Data Format (e.g., OPC UA Nodeset)
Data Model (e.g., OPC UA Modelling Language)
Semantics (e.g., AAS Submodel Templates)

🤝 Standardization & Collaboration

Industry aligned around:
- OPC UA
- Asset Administration Shell (AAS)
- Eclipse Dataspace Connector (EDC)
Microsoft contributed 6–8 million lines of open source code to these initiatives

🧪 Proof of Concept

A DPP for paper was built
- Highlighted difficulty in capturing carbon footprint data
- Noted that 90% of emissions come from supply chains, not energy use

🏭 Small & Medium Manufacturer Opportunity

SMEs often lack internal IT
Opportunity for cloud providers and software vendors to support compliance

🧰 Smart Manufacturing Profile Designer

Open-source tool by CESMII
Enables DPP creation using 400+ templates
Designed for users with minimal IT skills

☁️ Edge-to-Cloud Integration

DPPs must function across cloud and edge
EDC enables cross-platform, peer-to-peer, decentralized data sharing

🌐 IEC Standardization

IEC TC65 forming a working group to:
- Create international standards based on AAS, OPC UA, and EDC

💬 Quotes from the Session

“Open source and standards are two sides of the same coin.”

Industry Partners

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Industry Partners

📅 June 28, 2025 | 🕘 09:24

This session featured insights from key industry leaders and initiatives shaping trusted, interoperable, and sovereign data sharing across sectors.

1. Thomas Obermeyer – Catena-X

Origin & Vision:
Started as a German government-funded research initiative, Catena-X has evolved into a global operational network coordinated by the Catena-X Association.

Scope:
Focused on the automotive industry, involving OEMs (BMW, Mercedes-Benz, VW) and suppliers, with hubs in North America, APAC, China, and Spain.

Aruba and Opiquad

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

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:

Opiquad and Fulcrum

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Fulcrum is an open-source, European initiative designed to transform the fragmented landscape of local cloud providers into a unified, federated “cloud continuum.”
It enables regional cloud and telecom providers to commercially trade compute, network, and higher-level services while maintaining sovereignty, interoperability, and compliance with emerging EU trust and data regulations.

🔧 How the Project is Organised

Layer	What it Does	Key Artefacts
1. Governance	Provides the neutral consensus room for technical and business rule-making	InterCloud Exchange (ICE) Foundation – governs specifications, public repositories, and defines the open-source stack
2. Execution	Matches supply and demand for infrastructure and services across providers	Computing Exchange Market (CEM) – handles onboarding, metering, billing, SLA evidence for cross-provider transactions
3. Technology Core	Federates cloud infrastructure across providers	Fulcrum Core – Apache 2.0 licensed OSS that enables CSPs to expose services into the exchange via gateway-based federation
4. Digital Ecosystem	Supports CMPs, app platforms, and higher-level services	Open APIs, a service catalogue, built-in support for notarisation and Industrial Dataspace Agent to enforce policies with workloads

⚙️ Architectural Principles

Open & Vendor-Neutral: All code released under Apache 2.0; governance decisions via ICE Foundation
Federated & Edge-Ready: Each provider retains their PoPs; optimized for proximity and locality
Wholesale-Only Model: Fulcrum is B2B only—never resells to end-users
Built-in Compliance: Identity, policy, and audit hooks aligned with the EU Data Act and Cloud Regulation

💡 Why It Matters (and Where Opiquad Fits)

Challenge Today	What Fulcrum Adds	Opiquad’s Role
Local CSPs losing share to hyperscalers	Enables a cloud continuum exchange for regional providers to monetize idle capacity	Early implementation partner validating Fulcrum Core and CEM with real service trades
Interoperability ends at IaaS APIs	Gateway and policy engine unifies IaaS, PaaS, and data-space agents	Contributes adapters and Industrial Dataspace Agent to integrate enterprise-grade data exchange
High trust/compliance overhead for SMEs	ICE Foundation provides shared credentials and billing stack	Ensures open-source artefacts meet EU regulatory and sovereignty requirements for Opiquad clients

🚦 Current Status

✅ Fulcrum Core public release complete; Framework Lab evaluates tech before promotion to Core
✅ CEM MVP live with API onboarding, billing, and metering across multiple CSPs
🔜 2025–2026 Roadmap includes:
- Multi-cloud policy propagation
- Automated edge workload placement
- Full alignment with EU Data Act and CISPE Code of Conduct

🧭 Take-away

Fulcrum is not another proprietary cloud — it’s the missing exchange layer that allows hundreds of European-scale and regional providers to operate as one hyperscale platform, while retaining control over their infrastructure, customer relationships, and compliance.

Technical Deep Dive EDC

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

📅 June 30, 2025 | 🕖 07:41
Presenter: Jim Marino

Jim’s Component Walkthrough Summary

🔄 Two-Tier Architecture: Control Plane vs Industrial Data Plane

Control Plane: Lightweight, policy-driven layer managing catalog, contract negotiation, and enforcement.
Data Plane: Handles big-data, file transfers, and streaming workloads.
Can be split across clouds or run side-by-side, with DSP messages keeping both planes in sync.

🧱 Industrial Data-Plane Blueprint

Reference stack combines:
- On-prem ingest pipeline (OPC UA, AAS, edge filtering, blob/SQL storage)
- Multi-tenant SaaS layer exposing assets over REST or AAS APIs
Designed for connector-based transfer

🔐 DSP + DCP Protocols

Dataspace Protocol (DSP): Orchestrates catalog → contract → transfer
Decentralized Claims Protocol (DCP): Adds verifiable credentials so only trusted partners get access — no central identity provider required

🧪 Virtualised EDC Runtime (EDC-V)

A virtualisation container enables:
- Many tenants + many dataspaces
- One EDC instance per environment
Context loaded per request, with message queues ensuring scalability and elasticity

🚀 Efficiency Boost via State Machines

Swaps inefficient polling (“tick-over”) for reliable message queues
Enables horizontally-scalable connector functions and reduces CPU waste
JVM overhead amortised across tenants

🧵 Connector Fabric Manager (CFM)

Tenant & Ops Manager:
- Tracks tenants, memberships, DIDs
- Declarative “deployment definitions” for provisioning clusters
Pluggable agents deploy or migrate clusters (e.g. Kubernetes cells)

⚙️ Built-in Workload Automation

Tasks like startup, scale, failover, migration simplified to:
- Copy config + route traffic
- Infrastructure handled outside EDC using CFM provider plugins

🛡 Policy Engine Upgrade

Dynamic CEL-based evaluator supports runtime rules per dataspace
- e.g., apply different access rules for Catena-X vs. Manufacturing-X
Enables multi-tenant, policy-isolated runtimes

🏛 Standards & Governance Alignment

Built to align with:
- ISO 20151, CEN JTC 25 Trusted Data Transactions
- Eclipse Dataspace Working Group specs
Supports procurement-ready governance and future-proof interoperability

🧪 Next Steps for Partners

Help dogfood the virtualised build
Contribute data-plane plugins
Integrate CFM with your cloud
Public Minimum Viable Dataspace repo and demo clusters are available

🔗 Demo Repository:
github.com/paullatzelsperger/MinimumViableDataspace/tree/feat/aas_demo

Wrap up and Next Steps

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Wrap-up and Next Steps

📅 June 30, 2025 | 🕖 07:43

🔍 High-Level Wrap-Up

✅ What We Set Out To Do

Bring the dataspace and EU-cloud communities together to align on vision, terminology, and key pain points
Validate the “dataspace-as-a-service” opportunity for European cloud providers
Kick off concrete OSS workstreams that any provider can adopt and monetize
Map the standards landscape to build once and interoperate everywhere

🛠 What We Achieved in Two Intense Days

27+ organizations (cloud providers, SIs, SMEs, standards bodies) aligned on:

Milan Workshop Summary – June 2025 on DCSA

Agenda

European Cloud Accelerator Workshop Agenda

🗓 Wednesday, June 4

⏰ 10:00 — Welcome / Introductions / Session Objectives

⏰ 10:30 — European Cloud Accelerator Overview / Update

Introduction & Attendees

Participant Introductions

Keynote – Prof. Boris Otto (Fraunhofer ISST)

Summary

Intro to Dataspaces

Intro to Dataspaces, General Data Sharing Scenarios, and Feedback Solicitation

Key Points

Industrial Data Sharing – Erich Barnstedt

🔑 Key Takeaways

📘 Digital Product Passport (DPP)

🔗 Interoperability Requires 4 Standardized Elements

🤝 Standardization & Collaboration

🧪 Proof of Concept

🏭 Small & Medium Manufacturer Opportunity

🧰 Smart Manufacturing Profile Designer

☁️ Edge-to-Cloud Integration

🌐 IEC Standardization

💬 Quotes from the Session

Industry Partners

Industry Partners

1. Thomas Obermeyer – Catena-X

Aruba and Opiquad

Partner Presentations – Aruba and Opiquad

Aruba Presentation Summary – Marco Mangiulli

🏢 Company Overview

🏢 Data Centers and Trust Services

🌐 Open Source and Cloud-Native Innovation

Opiquad and Fulcrum

🔧 How the Project is Organised

⚙️ Architectural Principles

💡 Why It Matters (and Where Opiquad Fits)

🚦 Current Status

🧭 Take-away

Technical Deep Dive EDC

Jim’s Component Walkthrough Summary

🔄 Two-Tier Architecture: Control Plane vs Industrial Data Plane

🧱 Industrial Data-Plane Blueprint

🔐 DSP + DCP Protocols

🧪 Virtualised EDC Runtime (EDC-V)

🚀 Efficiency Boost via State Machines

🧵 Connector Fabric Manager (CFM)

⚙️ Built-in Workload Automation

🛡 Policy Engine Upgrade

🏛 Standards & Governance Alignment

🧪 Next Steps for Partners

Wrap up and Next Steps

Wrap-up and Next Steps

🔍 High-Level Wrap-Up

✅ What We Set Out To Do

🛠 What We Achieved in Two Intense Days