In January, the European project SmartCLIDE* was launched under the leadership of the Bremen Institute for Applied Systems Technology (ATB). Its aim is to promote the use of cloud services in businesses and public administrations. The project will provide an integrated development environment (Cloud IDE) that accelerates and secures the creation and deployment of industry-specific web solutions, as well as simplifies updates.
Nine research institutes, software companies, and universities from six European countries are collaborating on 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 context-sensitive classification and configuration of software modules, automated testing, and the distribution of solutions and generic interfaces for major cloud service providers.
The SmartCLIDE consortium (© ATB)
The SmartCLIDE solution is based on the Behavior-Based Development (BDD) approach, which involves users in the software development process early on and in an agile manner. In addition, a deep learning engine analyzes application usage by monitoring runtime. This AI component will help software developers in the future to design their clients' solutions for a perfect fit and to detect and eliminate errors more quickly.
The EU Commission is funding the project as part of its Horizon 2020 program to strengthen the digital sovereignty of the European economy. "The cloud is the engine of digitalization, but many companies are still hesitant to use it," says Stefan Gregorzik, Business Development Manager at CONTACT Software. "SmartCLIDE should allow for combining high security requirements with easy system integration and a good user experience, so that cloud solutions become widely accepted.".
CONTACT's task is to test, evaluate, and validate the SmartCLIDE development environment with its Elements platform. Eclipse Foundation Europe is handling communication for the project within the global open-source community, as the core components of the new Cloud IDE will be released under the Open Source Software (OSS) license. This means that software developers and commercial users can freely view, use, and further develop the project's subsequent results.
* The acronym stands for "Smart Cloud Integrated Development Environment" which supports the complete implementation, composition, and deployment of data-centric services and applications in the cloud
