Alberto P. Martí

Launched by the European Commission in December 2021, under the sponsorship of Commissioner Thierry Breton, the European Alliance for Industrial Data, Edge and Cloud has the objectives of strengthening the position of the EU industry on cloud and edge technologies, and meeting the needs of EU businesses and public administrations that process sensitive categories of data. The Alliance brings together relevant stakeholders from the private and public sector to jointly define strategic investment roadmaps to enable the next generation of highly-secure, distributed, interoperable, and resource-efficient sovereign cloud and edge technologies. This talk will provide a summary of the role that open source plays in the EU technological roadmap that the Alliance will be publishing by the end of January 2023, and will explore the different ways in which collaboration around open source technologies can contribute to building a future European sovereign cloud.

Digital autonomy has been at the heart of the public policy debate in the EU for a while now, with Commissioner Thierry Breton himself stating in 2021 that “in the digital decade, Open Source will be a key element to achieve Europe’s resilience and digital sovereignty”. In this session, which will also include an open debate with the audience, we will analyze the opportunities for open source when it comes to contributing to building Europe’s technological sovereignty, but also the challenges that this new policy landscape poses for the open source ecosystem in Europe (and beyond).

Gaël Blondelle joined the Eclipse Foundation in 2013 and now serves as Chief Membership Officer. He has been involved in the open source arena for more than 18 years in a number of key roles. Gaël co-founded an open source start-up and worked as its Chief Technology Officer. Gaël then worked in business development for an open source systems integration company and managed highly strategic research IT projects aiming to create open source ecosystems for major industrial players. Gaël joined the Eclipse Foundation to pursue his goal of helping more companies work in open source, and to implement open, innovative and collaborative ecosystems for mission-critical applications.

Alberto P. Martí has developed most of his career in Spain and in the UK, both in the IT sector and in Academia. As VP of Open Source Innovation at OpenNebula Systems, he deals with strategic collaborations with public cloud/edge providers, open source initiatives, and development teams from other tech vendors. Alberto coordinates the SovereignEdge.EU initiative and is involved in both the IPCEI-CIS and the European Alliance for Industrial Data, Edge and Cloud, where he supports the role of OpenNebula Systems as chairing company of the Cloud/Edge Working Group while co-leading one of its Task Forces. Alberto is particularly interested in the conjunction between open source, ethical innovation, and digital sovereignty.