The project is a reality thanks to Next Generation EU funds
After the economic, social and health crisis derived from Covid-19, the European Union opted for Next Generation EU, the largest financial stimulus instrument to help the Member States that suffered the most from the ravages of the pandemic.
An instrument endowed with more than 800,000 million euros to advance in a greener, digital, healthier, stronger and more egalitarian European Union. To access these funds, the Member States had to present national recovery plans, which the European Commission validated afterwards, to receive the disbursements.
Thus was born the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan, the Spanish project based on ten lever policies to walk in favour of the ecological transition, digital transformation, territorial cohesion and gender equality.
The fifth pillar of the plan is the ‘Modernization and digitization of the industrial fabric and SMEs, recovery of tourism and promotion of a Spain entrepreneurial nation’. Within this lever policy is the objective ‘digital connectivity, promotion of cybersecurity and deployment of 5G’, with the sub-section ‘deployment of cross-border digital infrastructures, which includes the development of R&D and innovation ecosystems in cloud computing’.
This is where the Integra Cloud project comes in. It starts with the goal of making Spain one of the most developed cloud computing ecosystems, thus contributing to Europe’s digital autonomy. Thus, with the specific purpose of promoting digital transformation through research, development and innovation in the field of cloud computing technologies.
The Integra Cloud project is a reality thanks to Royal Decree 959/2022, of November 15, which regulates the direct grant of a subsidy to public research centers and foundations and Spanish public universities for the realization of innovative projects in the area of cloud computing of the UNICO R&D Cloud program, within the framework of the European Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan.
The aforementioned Royal Decree aims to increase the leadership of Spanish research groups in cloud computing, strengthen Spanish participation in projects of the Horizon Europe program, transfer cutting-edge knowledge of cloud computing from research groups in the public sector to the private sector (especially SMEs), to strengthen the business fabric, boost the generation of quality employment and guarantee real and effective equality between women and men.
The Ministry of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation has distributed 42.9 million euros among ten beneficiary entities. This grant has arrived thanks to the research solvency of INCLIVA, experience and results endorsed by some previous projects such as BigMedilytics and Bodypass, germ of Integra Cloud. Two European projects funded by the Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Program of the European Union.