Press release - January 16, 2020
CONTACT Software is partner in European cloud project SmartCLIDE
How can cloud solutions be deployed quickly, operated securely and easily expanded? CONTACT Software, the Eclipse Foundation and other partners are researching this in a project funded by the European Commission. The results will be published as open source software.
In January, the European project SmartCLIDE* was launched under the leadership of the Bremen Institute for Applied Systems Technology ATB. Its aim is to foster the use of cloud services in companies and public administrations. The project will provide an integrated development environment (Cloud IDE) that accelerates and secures the creation and deployment of sector-specific web solutions as well as simplifies updates.
Nine research institutes, software companies and universities from six European countries collaborate in SmartCLIDE. With the help of security-by-design experts from The Open Group (UK), they are implementing a universal reference architecture based on GitHub or similar online services. It includes tools for the classification and context-related configuration of software modules, automatic testing and distribution of solutions, and generic interfaces to the leading cloud service providers.
The SmartCLIDE solution builds on the behavior-driven development (BDD) approach, which involves users in the software development process at an early stage and in an agile manner. In addition, a deep learning engine analyzes the apps' usage by means of runtime monitoring. This AI component will help software developers in future to design their customer solutions to fit perfectly and to detect and eliminate bugs more quickly.
The EU Commission is funding the project as part of its Horizon 2020 programme to strengthen the digital sovereignty of the European economy. "The cloud is the motor of digitization, but many companies are still hesitant to use it," says Stefan Gregorzik, Business Development Manager at CONTACT Software. "SmartCLIDE should make it possible to combine high security requirements with easy system integration and a good user experience, so that cloud solutions are widely accepted".
CONTACT's task is to test, evaluate and validate the SmartCLIDE development environment with its Elements platform. The Eclipse Foundation Europe takes over the project communication in the worldwide open source community, as the central components of the new Cloud IDE will be published under OSS license. This means that software developers and business users can view, freely utilize and further develop the later project results.
*The acronym SmartCLIDE stands for „Smart Cloud Integrated Development Environment supporting the full-stack implementation, composition and deployment of data-centered services and applications in the cloud“
