Collaborations

AVANT is not an isolated project, but part of a broader European innovation ecosystem involving companies, universities, research centers, and public institutions. Within this collaborative context, spillovers – benefits that extend beyond the boundaries of a single project – are generated, contributing to the dissemination of technologies and skills across the EU.

The project primarily produces technological and knowledge spillovers through the open sharing of results: publications accessible to the scientific community and software largely released as open source. This encourages the reuse of developed solutions and accelerates the adoption of technologies such as Digital Twin and Cognitive Cloud.

AVANT also generates educational spillovers by developing skills in cloud computing, artificial intelligence, Digital Twin, and data analytics. These competencies are disseminated through training programs and staff mobility, helping to bridge the European digital divide.

Moreover, the project promotes new organizational models for managing complex systems, sharing transnational methodologies and governance frameworks that strengthen stakeholder collaboration and create lasting partnerships.

From an economic and social perspective, AVANT supports the creation of skilled jobs and opens new opportunities for SMEs and startups, facilitating access to scalable technologies such as Digital Twin as a Service, and making innovation-driven growth in Europe more inclusive.

AVANT is part of the Lab8ra group.

Lab8ra is a collaborative testing environment created to develop and test solutions within the European distributed cloud computing landscape (cloud-edge). It brings together various stakeholders – telecommunications operators, ICT companies, research centers, and end users – with the common goal of creating interoperable, secure solutions aligned with the principles of European digital sovereignty.

Operationally, Lab8ra functions as a distributed testbed connecting the infrastructures of 14 organizations across five countries, allowing technologies to be validated in real and geographically dispersed scenarios. Its main focuses are the integration of cross-border networks, orchestration of resources via Kubernetes, and implementation of advanced security mechanisms.

Within this ecosystem, the AVANT platform, developed by Engineering, acts as the orchestration and resource management layer as well as the data management layer to enable the development of Digital Twins. Essentially, it is the tool that allows controlling and coordinating distributed data and resources among the various partners as if they were a single system, masking the complexity of the edge-cloud continuum even when distributed across multiple providers.

Active collaborations include TIM, Arsys/IONOS, ENEA, FBK, as well as European research institutes and companies such as FH Dortmund, OpenNebula, Phoenix, and Tolar/Hashnet.