The virtual Next-Generation IoT and Edge Computing Strategy Forum was organised by the European Commission in collaboration with the Horizon 2020 EU-IoT initiative and took place virtually on 22 April 2021. The event aimed at gathering top technology experts from across several digital and vertical domains, as well as corporate-strategy level representatives to exchange views on priorities, challenges and opportunities, and establish a commonly shared strategic European vision for the next-generation IoT and (far) edge computing. With its medium-term time perspective, this initiative is part of the implementation of the European data and cloud strategy and will be supported by a research and innovation theme on Cloud-to-Edge-to-IoT under the first Work Programme of Horizon Europe.

TERMINET Project Coordinator, Prof. Panagiotis Sarigiannidis, Associate Professor at the University of Western Macedonia, participated in the “Visionary Concepts” session, a discussion round between industrial research actors, Research and Technology Organisations (RTOs) and universities, including speakers and representatives from OpenNebula, fortiss, ThreeFold Tech, University of Western Macedonia, and the French Atomic Energy Commission. During this session, the motivation behind TERMINET was presented as well as the objectives, the business logic, the architecture and the use case addressed by the TERMINET project.

The TERMINET project is part of the Next-Generation IoT (NGIoT) initiative (https://www.ngiot.eu/), a community of projects and related initiatives that aim to maximise the power of IoT made in Europe. NGIoT works to lower the barrier for adoption and development of IoT-empowered solutions, by supporting business models, innovation and skills.

The discussion of the forum addressed, amongst others, the following topics:

• How can Europe exploit its strengths in important industrial sectors in order to position itself well on the next generation of the IoT and edge computing?
• What are the most important trends and emerging concepts to drive the developments of open platforms for the IoT and edge computing?
• How can European actors compete with global players in the emerging Cloud-to-Edge-to-IoT ecosystem?
• How can collaboration between European digital and industrial actors be strengthened?