What is FIWARE?

This is a European initiative born of Public Private Partnership Future Internet, aimed at increasing European competitiveness in the field ofInformation and Communication Technology (ICT). FIWARE is today an "independent foundation".

One might ask: how?

By means of a technological infrastructure based on OpenStack (open source architecture for cloud computing) and a set of communication specifications based on open standards that can help developers create smart apps for managing services in the most diverse sectors.

The strength of FIWARE lies in the intrinsic ability to simplify the creation of smart application, allowing a considerable saving of time in the creation of applications and consequently increasing the competitiveness of those who use them.

The success of the idea is demonstrated by the image below, which represents the European community.

FIWARE provides developers with some powerful tools and so-called "Generic Enablers", or basic modules to be used, such as Lego bricks, to build complex applications. Most of the Generic Enablers is released under an open license, but proprietary blocks also exist.

Some might think that this is an initiative destined to die because of the strong interests of the industries of the , but he would immediately be denied.

Currently the foundation has over 100 members (among them some giants of the European ICT world such as the Spanish one Telefonica, the French Orange, the European Atos, the Italian Engineering but also Japanese NEC).

If this were not enough to make us understand the magnitude of the FIWARE phenomenon, I can add that more than 400 million euros have already been invested in the project!

The foundation runs several laboratories that can be used to test the applications produced. Furthermore FIWARE also provides support and training to those interested.

Among the most interesting initiatives, from my point of view, there is the one related to Open and Agile Smart Cities, an initiative that aims to develop an open market based on the needs of the cities and the communities that comprise them.

In February, more than one hundred cities in Europe joined the project.

Among these there are eight in Italy: Milan, Palermo, Lecce, Cagliari, Terni, Ancona, Genoa and Messina.

Can there be implications of the FIWARE initiative useful to the world of Defense?

To try to understand it, we met Dr. Dario Avallone, head of the company's research and development department Engineering and responsible for the FIWARE initiative.

Dr. Avallone, you work for a large Italian computer company, the Engineering¹, as head of the research sector but at the same time follows the FIWARE project². What is your role in the European project?

To get to frame my role in the FIWARE context, I briefly summarize the most important passages that allowed FIWARE to be brought to what it is today. Advance that Engineering has played a fundamental role from the beginning, which is continuing today, in an increasingly active way.

In 2009 the European Commission launches the Future Internet program as a Public-Private Partnership together with European industries. In 2012 FIWARE is born as a technological solution composed of so-called generic services (Generic Enabler). In the 2014 the Geneic Enablers are made available to anyone who wants to try them through the FIWARE Lab, a cloud environment distributed throughout Europe. A series of pilot applications are developed for thematic areas (eg energy, health, transport, safety ...). The 2015 starts the acceleration program which sees an investment of around 80M €, aimed at European start-ups and small-medium enterprises³, and that in two years brings to the market a thousand applications using FIWARE. In 2015 begins the transformation of FIWARE from a European project to an Open Source Community; becomes a key aspect for the Open & Agile Smart Cities Initiative⁴; the first commercial platform offers are born. In the 2016, a very important step, with the creation of the FIWARE Foundation, a non-profit organization whose mission is to guarantee the sustainability of the FIWARE ecosystem.

Engineering is one of the founding members of the FIWARE Foundation⁵, together with ATOS, Telefonica and Orange; I am a member of the Board of Directors of the foundation.

As we understand from this rapid introduction, to speak of FIWARE as a European project is, today, too reductive.

Defense Online takes care of the military world from all points of view and IT also has its importance. Do you think the FIWARE project can represent an opportunity for Defense? Are there any FIWARE projects dedicated to the world of defense?

Considering the opportunities offered by the technology stack made available by FIWARE and how this has been successfully exploited by the acceleration program mentioned above, surely it is possible to imagine that FIWARE can prove to be an advantageous solution also for some of the multiple needs that the ICT system of the Defense must satisfy. Supporting aspects of the FIWARE philosophy such as the complete opening of service programming interfaces and their availability in Open Source are, in my opinion, extremely important features of flexibility and transparency for a solution to be used in the public sphere. Obviously, when dealing with a concrete use of any software solution, other aspects such as the quality of the components and development support should not be underestimated.

Analyzing the thousands of applications I mentioned earlier, we cannot say that there are any specifically dedicated to the world of Defense. In my opinion this is mainly due to questions of business opportunities and the proximity of actors (start-ups and SMEs) to sectors such as industry, health, transport and society to list a few. I believe that those components that facilitate the integration between the real and the digital environment, that is the services dedicated to the Internet of Things to interface the applications with sensors and actuators that are, for example, present in the environments in we live in. To complete this type of interface with the physical world, FIWARE strongly supports the importance of reconstructing the context in which it operates. Only with an adequate reconstruction of the context is it possible to activate analysis logics and decision support.

Having said this, the nature of general purpose services of FIWARE does not limit its use in specific sectors.

Among European countries, Germany is perhaps the one that has invested more in Open Source. In your opinion, how is Italy positioned in the sector?

Considering the issue of adopting Open Source software in general would require an interview dedicated solely to that. By restricting the theme to the FIWARE experience, its vision concerning Germany is confirmed, in fact the headquarters of the FIWARE Foundation is located in Berlin. As far as our country is concerned, we find that there are more 100 companies that have been successful in the acceleration program and that operate in sectors such as agribusiness, energy, transport and smart cities. Also counting all the companies that have participated in the initial phases we get a critical mass that brings with it a culture in the use of Open Source software that is very promising for the future. Let me point out that in addition to the software, equally important are the Open Standards and Open Data, to have a complete picture.

As we understand, I do not hide the preference for open code software.

From a strategic point of view, FIWARE seems to be a great European opportunity to interrupt (or at least slow down) the excessive power of US multinationals. How is the initiative seen in the Italian political world?

Saying how the FIWARE initiative is viewed in the Italian political world is certainly not a simple matter. Although FIWARE is a response consistent with the political thrust given by the Commission towards the adoption of Open Platforms, in Italy these recommendations are not yet adequately accepted by the decision makers of our public institutions. Concretely, especially with regard to traditional tenders, still today, the use of open software and standards does not seem to be a particularly qualifying element. On the other hand, the sensitivity of our institutional representatives towards open platforms and standards is much more perceptible in initiatives with a strong innovative content. For example, to date nine Italian cities have joined the European association called OASC (Open Agile Smart City), to which I referred at the beginning, aimed precisely at promoting the use of open platforms and standards. In this context, the use of FIWARE is absolutely well seen above all to carry out experimental applications with a high innovation content.

Personally this makes me confident that in a reasonable time FIWARE can find recognition and use even in less restricted contexts thanks to the advantages, both in economic and re-use terms, that its adoption can guarantee to Public Administrations. With reference to this aspect, we have already conducted a first evaluation of how FIWARE responds to the Strategic Evolution Model of the ICT of the Public Administration presented by AgID in the recently published document that presents the Three-year Plan for IT in the PA.

The modern world has awakened in the midst of cyberspace, perhaps without understanding how it ended. This means that in addition to having to manage the increased risk, many opportunities could be created for the development of the IT security sector. FIWARE how do you manage security? What best practices are used in the software production process?

How is quality control managed? What are the FIWARE training paths in the specific sector?

Let's see one point at a time starting with the security issue. FIWARE addresses this issue, making available to application developers, a series of services (Generic Enabler) that allow the management of user profiles and the protection of the web services that make up the application. I remember that FIWARE chose the implementation of the Generic Enabler interfaces according to the architectural paradigm based on the REST web service. The protection of these web services (exposed by the Generic Enablers or by the application) is allowed by the use and appropriate configuration of components that yield authentication and authorization rules to allow the use of the protected service. User profiles are managed by FIWARE with a Generic Enabler that provides the functionality of a typical Identity Manager tool.

The development of Generic Enablers is a continuous process, at least for most of those published in the official catalog. The generally adopted development model takes inspiration from the Agile one, preferring development based on the actual needs that are gathered by the application developers. To facilitate the dialogue between Generic Enabler developers and application developers, a series of channels are available ranging from traditional mailing lists to Question and Answer services up to a dedicated system that allows you to track all requests and related answers. Regarding the choice of the programming language to implement the Generic Enablers, this is left free thanks to the level of separation provided by the REST interfaces.

Within the FIWARE Community (and currently in collaboration with the FI-NEXT project) there is a group of people dedicated to testing the Generic Enablers, the QA Team. The tests that are taken into consideration by this team of people, independent of the service developers, are, in addition to the traditional functional and performance tests, also those related to documentation (installation and use), to information published in FIWARE Catalog⁶ and in the FIWARE Academy⁷. Once all the types of tests have been completed for a Generic Enabler it is possible to calculate a synthetic quality indicator which in turn is published, as relevant information, in the catalog.

As regards training, on how to use Generic Enablers, various training events were organized over the years and in various European locations where the component developers held courses. However, FIWARE makes available to anyone interested a portal, the FIWARE Academy, which groups together training material of various kinds (seminars, videos, presentations).

In addition to the freely accessible material, structured courses are available for several days, with practical exercises, generally provided by the members of the FIWARE Foundation, as in the case of Engineering.

Among the FIWARE projects, in your opinion which one is the most promising, what will surely have a great impact on all of us digital services consumers?

In several respects there can be various projects developed using FIWARE and by focusing on a specific need they generate an impact on users. What I would like to mention instead is CEDUS⁸ (City Enabler for Digital Urban Services), a project that allows you to collect data, very often already present, in the cities, to organize them and display them in the form of an interactive map. This makes it possible to support decisions in the urban area and encourage the creation of new services based on the data collected. Two obvious advantages deriving from the use of FIWARE are: first, the independence from the supplier, both of data and of development of the services; second, portability, and repeatability in different urban contexts.

The City Enabler is already showing its potential to generate the impact to which it refers, in fact, a confirmation of the interest in this solution arrives in the international arena, as the first result of participation in the call for tenders (pre-commercial procurement - PCP) called Select4cities⁹. This call was published last March by the cities of Antwerp, Copenhagen and Helsinki to "buy" an innovative, open, multi-domain, scalable and replicable urban platform. On 28 European consortia that participated in the 1 phase of the competition, the one based on the use of CEDUS, and conducted by Engineering, was the best (with considerable detachment from the second), both in terms of innovation in terms of technical response and economic offer .

The aspect that makes this case interesting is that the three cities are not only looking for a single solution to be applied to different domains, which are precisely: mobility, environment and health, but also as innovation buyers for other cities. In essence, a virtuous model to study closely and, perhaps, to propose and develop also in our country.

Dr. Avallone, thank you on behalf of Defense Online, now we all have a little clearer the importance of the FIWARE project and the Open Standard in general, increasingly used in the civil world and in the near future, perhaps, in the world of Defense.

Alessandro Rugolo