Why do we need FACIS and how does it contribute to a bigger vision? In the interview series FACES of FACIS Andreas Weiss, Managing Director at eco – Association of the Internet Industry, places these questions in a broader context.
How would you summarise the vision of FACIS (as part of the European infrastructure initiative 8ra) in one sentence?
Andreas Weiss: FACIS was created to accelerate the orchestration of federated ecosystems. More specifically, prefabricated building blocks will make it possible to build digital ecosystems much more efficiently in future, as the players concerned can rely on standards and compatible technologies and thus reach the point of being able to evaluate innovative business applications as prototypes more quickly and to engage relevant stakeholders. A key pillar of such ecosystems is the so-called Multi-Provider Cloud-Edge Continuum – this term also describes the vision of the European umbrella initiative 8ra or formally the Important Project of Common European Interest (IPCEI), Next Generation Cloud Infrastructure and Services (CIS) to which FACIS belongs.
What such a Multi-Provider Cloud-Edge Continuum can look like is best described by the following example: Picture a journey where your autonomous car smoothly travels from Budapest to Madrid, effortlessly adjusting to diverse environments and infrastructures across borders. This seamless service provisioning between many providers (and users) is the vision of 8ra.
How does FACIS contribute to advancing the Multi-Provider Cloud-Edge Continuum? What gap does FACIS fill?
There are already several projects and initiatives working on cloud edge ecosystems, largely at the technological level, i.e., infrastructure-related, with certain business scenarios in scope. FACIS ties in with them in various ways and can, therefore, be described as a cross-sectional project.
However, FACIS focuses on the orchestration level and the aspect of the Service Level Agreement (SLA). In other words, to ensure that digital ecosystems enable new business applications in the best possible way, FACIS brings together different players from the fields of infrastructure, data spaces and business software – and aims to make previous findings easier to handle, i.e. practical, by developing an SLA Governance Framework and technical blueprints for multi service orchestration.
The terms industrial deployment and spillover effect are also important in this context. FACIS aims to incubate both. While industrial deployment means enabling EU-wide use and corresponding technical standardisation, the term spillover effect emphasises the fact that scenarios can be adopted in different domains in a similar way. This means that a multitude of digital business-to-business services can ultimately access smoothly functioning baseline services from various providers with reasonable service guarantees – the importance of such reliable services in an increasingly digitally networked world is demonstrated by the example of autonomous driving across European borders and different infrastructures.
Let’s get a little more specific: What current challenges do companies and users want FACIS to address? How do they benefit from FACIS (in the long term)?
Today, when several users within a connected value chain want to do business together, they often face the particular challenge of a lack of interoperability. This means that their different systems, data formats and processes cannot communicate seamlessly with each other, which leads to inefficient processes, increased coordination effort and potential sources of error. FACIS aims to facilitate collaboration between providers and users who offer a digital service or in turn use a service from another provider, by developing frameworks and faster, more customisable modules on an open-source basis.
This is not just about business models with purely digital products such as apps or cloud platforms. Today, behind every competitive physical product there is also a digital ecosystem of different providers that must digitally harmonise and coordinate via software.
With the help of a low-code orchestration engine and Federation Architecture Patterns (FAPs), FACIS aims to recognise patterns to define preconfigured, standardised processes. These can then be customised and scaled to suit the desired business case. This makes it easier for product and service owners, to sketch scenarios with a reasonable level of user experience. Stakeholders therefore benefit from a toolbox of predefined components, an improved customer comfort and scalable service design at the same time.
Why is this so important to bring different stakeholders together?
FACIS is a support activity for practical adoption of decentralized IT sources for various use cases – and therefore our roadmap requires alignment with various practical objectives. Service provider, service consumer, software developer and legal experts: FACIS wants all these parties to review the technical, legal and business feasibility of the desired orchestration modules.
What are the respective requirements for a digital ecosystem? Where are there similarities? In order to evaluate these ideas at an early stage, FACIS is organising several workshops from the outset of the project.
What results can be expected?
On the one hand, FACIS will develop a harmonised SLA taxonomy that shows, for example, how machine-readable SLAs can be presented jointly. This is the only way to ensure that no obstacles are placed in the way in the next step – when it comes to digital contracting and further monitoring of SLA KPIs. Closely linked to the taxonomy, an SLA framework agreement for combined SLAs will be created, which, for example, regulates how to deal with a provider being unable to provide a certain service contrary to expectations (captured by contractual agreement).
FAPs are also being developed to improve technical orchestration. These ready-made software modules and process templates can then be used to create new digital applications. FAPs could be used, for example, when onboarding a partner into a digital ecosystem or registering a digital identity – the stored data could then be selectively released on the software interface, for example. A low-code engine, a dynamic platform to simplify the management and scaling of multi-provider applications in real-time environments, will be available to make this software orchestration as easy as possible.
Finally, a more value-led question: FACIS is committed to the principle of open-source technology. What goals does the project pursue with this?
That is correct. FACIS is a funded project of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action (BMWK) and an essential pillar of the comprehensive 8ra initiative. FACIS, therefore, focuses on shared benefits, broad accessibility, and transparent results. Open-source technology enables exactly that. It can also be customised in line with current changes and individual requirements.
In concrete terms, this means that by developing FAPs as open-source components, FACIS promotes community-driven development and widespread use, further strengthening Europe’s digital ecosystem. In addition, FACIS will provide a digital contracting service as free and open-source software that is referring the European Digital Identity (EUDI) to create trust and reduce legal uncertainties on the contracting part. Beside this there are multiple other digital identifier options to be implemented by the open-source community. Moreover: The development of an SLA taxonomy that enables everyone to participate and make joint agreements accessible – even if the resulting software products may later be closed again – also plays a central role.
This approach enables greater scalability, security and compliance without organisations having to give up control of their assets and intellectual property. Through close collaboration between different providers and users, FACIS assists the development of innovative, interoperable and scalable services and their seamless integration into multi provider cloud-edge environments.