Opportunities and Challenges for Software, Services, Cloud and Data

Executive Summary This white paper identifies relevant challenges and opportunities for Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS), focussing on the impact of CPS on the main areas of NESSI and vice versa. NESSI is the Horizon 2020 European Technology Platform (ETP) for software, services and data. This paper does not aim to look at CPS from all angles, but provides a complementary contribution from the NESSI point of view. In particular the paper assesses the impact of the increasing role of software in Cyber-Physical Systems. Pure hardware, mechanical or communication network concerns are not in the scope of this white paper. The paper is structured into the following main sections:  Software engineering for CPS – The intelligence, dynamics and flexibility of future CPS lies in the ability to be context-aware and produce software that is both dependable and adapts to real time change, which goes beyond today's software engineering state of the art and practices.  Cloud for CPS – Cloud computing is a key element to obtain ubiquitous system deployment, execution and interaction, and provides key principles (such as adaptation and multi-tenancy) that may be leveraged for all kinds of devices.  CPS and Big Data – CPS with its computational power on the devices (including edge computing) will be a major source, collector, processor and distributer of data, not only in volume, but also in velocity, variety and veracity.  Software-based services on top of CPS – Software-based services constitute a key enabler for leveraging, packaging and delivering the core capabilities of a CPS infrastructure, realizing the potential that lies in creating value to business applications. Note that the topics of security, privacy and trust are intentionally left out. These will be covered by a forthcoming NESSI white paper.