Simpl: cloud-to-edge federations and data spaces made simple (updated August 2023)

Simpl will be:

• Anchored to specific use cases, covering a broad range of cases from sectoral data spaces (e.g. Agriculture, Genomics, Energy, Mobility) to Destination Earth, and from AI-on-demand to the European Open Science Cloud. Simpl will ensure that data sets and their infrastructures can be seamlessly interconnected and made interoperable.
• Smart and modular, to allow the replacement or addition of components without affecting the rest of the system, something that we hope to continue developing over time.
• Open source, allowing insights into all parts of the architecture (without any proprietary claims) and simple deployment.
• Green, scalable and elastic, by allowing a monitoring of its environmental performance, and the addition of new users without affecting performance.
• Secure and interoperable, where trust, confidence and compliance with regulations are built into the system. This implies an effortless sharing of resources between participants, regardless of their data processing environment. It creates an abstraction layer that enables data to flow across multiple providers and Member States.

And of course…

• simple to use and extend! 

See as well the enclosed set of clarifications about Simpl. 

Funding

Simpl is funded through the DIGITAL Europe Work Programme, under topics 2.1.1 (Smart middleware for a European cloud federation and for the European data space, receiving €65 million from 2021-2022), 2.1.2 (Large scale pilots for cloud-to-edge-based services), and across Specific Objective 2 (Cloud, data, and Artificial Intelligence), all of which will consider Simpl for their deployment.

The European Commission's role is to:

• Be the Contracting Authority procuring Simpl.
• Make Simpl freely available and open source for the benefit of the public and private sectors and ultimately, the European citizens.
• Deploy its own instances of Simpl as an active stakeholder of forthcoming data spaces.
• Be the main operator of some public sector-specific data spaces.
• Make available open testing environments for stakeholders to try out Simpl before deployment, in addition to its own participation in data spaces (a Simpl sandbox).

Preparatory work

With the support of a contractor, we conducted preparatory work which we are publishing as it is finalised. Here are the deliverables:

• The business use case model;
• Draft requirements and final business requirements;
• The architecture vision;
• The market analysis report;
• The service level requirements;
• The information system and technology architecture requirements;
• The product delivery lifecycle requirements and the Simpl governance model;
• The implementation roadmap;
• The cost model manual and the configurable cost model;
• The recommendation report;
• The handover plan and the handover report.

Moreover, the contractor who conducted the preparatory work organised a presentation of its findings on 30 May 2022, where they provided details on the background, vision, and possible implementation of Simpl.

The video presentations are available here:

• The state of cloud in the European Union 
• Keynote: the rationale behind Simpl 
• Simpl: Requirements and architecture 
• Q&A – 1: Simpl vision, requirements, and architecture 
• Simpl: Existing solutions, roadmap, and governance 
• Q&A – 2: Existing solutions, roadmap, and governance 
• Looking ahead and closing remarks 

The current estimate regarding the scope of the professional services to be procured is:

1. the development of SIMPL-Open. This will be the open-source software stack as envisaged in the above preliminary study, over which tenderers will be able to elaborate their own proposal.
2. the provision and management of SIMPL-Labs, a pre-installed demonstration/playground environment where third parties (typically sectoral data spaces in their early stages of inception) can experiment the deployment, maintenance, and support of the open-source software stack before deploying it for their own needs.
3. the provision of several instances of the SIMPL-Open software stack in the form of customised production environments for sectoral data spaces where the European Commission itself plays an active role in their management (these are called Simpl-Live).

We envisage the high-level roadmap for the implementation of Simpl as follows:

• A Minimum Viable Platform released as soon as possible.
• In parallel and starting as early as possible in 2024, the open testing environment (Simpl-Labs) will be made available for stakeholders to experiment with.
• We will progressively on-board and integrate use cases, helping them to adjust Simpl to their specific needs (without compromising its generic nature). Use cases otherwise funded under the DIGITAL Europe Work Programme will take priority.
• As an open-source project, we will conduct further developments in an open manner, listening to user needs and welcoming external contributions. The roadmap foresees major new releases every 6 months.

More information

You may find further details about the policy context in:

• The data strategy, which lays down the Commission strategy to make the most of the data economy, and which introduces the notion of cloud federation.
• The staff working document reporting on the stage of development of the data spaces.
• The DIGITAL Europe Work Programme for 2021-2022, which describes a detailed vision for Simpl (Section 2.1) and data spaces (Section 2.2).

There are many third-party initiatives working in this area and that we follow ourselves with great interest such as Gaia-X, the International Data Space Association, and the Eclipse Foundation, to name a few.

Simpl is an ambitious undertaking. To learn more about Simpl, stay tuned for additional, up-to-date information.

For suggestions, please contact cnect-simpl@ec.europa.eu (NB. communications related to ongoing procurements will be redirected to the proper channels).