Written by Veronica Vuotto / Trust IT services / Published on March 02, 2026

Europe’s digital transformation increasingly depends on its ability to move from isolated innovation efforts to coherent, interoperable ecosystems. The recently released MetaOS Insights publication provides an important backdrop to this evolution, highlighting how early initiatives explored the concept of “Meta Operating Systems” to orchestrate distributed computing resources across cloud, edge and IoT environments. These projects demonstrated that future digital infrastructures require modular architectures, strong interoperability and cross-sector collaboration to scale beyond experimentation.

In many ways, CEI-Sphere builds on this foundation. While MetaOS initiatives focused on technological groundwork and early ecosystem experimentation, CEI-Sphere operates at the next stage: supporting Large- Scale Pilots (LSPs), aligning stakeholders, and translating technical advances into scalable market-ready ecosystems across Europe.

Launched in October 2024 under Horizon Europe, CEI-Sphere acts as a coordination and support action designed to strengthen Europe’s Cloud-Edge-IoT (CEI) landscape. The project focuses on enabling collaboration, reducing fragmentation and helping innovation efforts converge around shared standards, architectures and market realities.

Supporting Large-Scale Pilots and scaling through open calls
A central pillar of CEI-Sphere’s work is supporting two major Large-Scale Pilots, O-CEI and COP-PILOT, as they develop
and validate real-world CEI solutions across multiple domains.

As these pilots move from design towards deployment and scaling, open calls have become a critical mechanism to expand participation, onboard new innovators and validate solutions in broader ecosystems. O-CEI has already completed its first open call, while COP-PILOT is preparing to launch its own, reflecting a shift from experimentation towards ecosystem expansion.

To support this transition, CEI-Sphere recently organised a dedicated webinar exploring lessons learned from open call
processes and strategies for positioning strong proposals. The discussion highlighted that success depends not only on technical excellence but also on alignment with market needs, interoperability frameworks and cross-domain collaboration.

The Hourglass Model: creating a shared language for the CEI ecosystem
One of CEI-Sphere’s most visible achievements to date has been the development and promotion of the Hourglass
Model, a conceptual framework designed to make complex digital ecosystems easier to understand and navigate.

The Hourglass Model functions as a shared ecosystem canvas. It maps stakeholders and technological capabilities across layers, from infrastructure and connectivity to platforms, standards and applications, highlighting the “narrow centre” where interoperability, open standards and governance mechanisms enable collaboration at scale.

Since its introduction, the model has gained traction across the European R&I community. It has been presented at events such as the Open Source Community Day in Madrid, co-located with the AIOTI Days, as well as a dedicated CEI-Sphere webinar, where projects demonstrated how it can support ecosystem mapping, interoperability analysis and strategic alignment.

Importantly, the model is designed as a dynamic tool. Speakers emphasised that it should be used early in projects to align
ambitions and continuously revisited as ecosystems evolve, regulations mature and new use cases emerge.

Open source collaboration and ecosystem dialogue
The Open Source Community Day, co- organised with the Eclipse Foundation, marked an important milestone in positioning CEI-Sphere within broader European discussions around open digital infrastructure. Bringing together industrial
actors, research projects and open-source communities, the event reflected Europe’s ambition to build federated digital ecosystems aligned with initiatives such as the European Data Strategy and emerging discussions around a potential Eurostack.

The event also showcased how open- source frameworks and shared standards can accelerate innovation while reducing
dependency on proprietary hyperscale platforms, which has become a key element of Europe’s digital sovereignty debate.

Complementing this effort, CEI-Sphere also launched a first podcast talk show, expanding its outreach to new audiences and providing accessible insights into ecosystem challenges and opportunities.

Connecting CEI innovation with sectoral realities: the V2G example
CEI-Sphere’s ecosystem approach is also reflected in cross-sector initiatives such as V2G Leaders Europe 2025, where energy, mobility and digital infrastructure stakeholders explored how bidirectional charging technologies can move from pilots to market deployment.

The event, which took place last November in Brussels, demonstrated that technological readiness alone is insufficient; scaling requires alignment between policy frameworks, standards, industrial strategies and user-centric business models.

Discussions involving DG ENER, DG RTD and DG CNECT highlighted how cloud-edge architectures, data spaces and interoperable platforms will underpin future energy flexibility services.

Towards living ecosystem tools and stronger community alignment
Beyond events and frameworks, CEI-Sphere is developing practical resources to support long-term ecosystem growth. A visualisation tool currently under development will map use cases, stakeholders and relationships across the CEI ecosystem, providing a dynamic overview of actors and capabilities rather than a static catalogue.

This approach reflects a broader ambition: transforming project outputs into “living resources” that evolve with stakeholder
input and remain useful beyond the project lifecycle.

Looking ahead, CEI-Sphere will continue supporting Large-Scale Pilots and promoting their open calls, while strengthening collaboration across European initiatives and standardisation communities. Upcoming activities include participation in the Open Community for Research event in Brussels and further work on ecosystem visualisation and interoperability frameworks.

If MetaOS initiatives explored what distributed digital infrastructures could look like, CEI-Sphere represents the next step, turning these concepts into coordinated ecosystems capable of scaling across sectors. By connecting research, industry, policy and open communities, the project contributes to a broader European ambition: ensuring that cloud-edge-IoT technologies become not only innovative, but interoperable, competitive and strategically aligned with Europe’s digital
future.