Digital technologies underpin innovation and competitiveness across a broad range of market sectors. A key technology to boost such innovation and competitiveness is represented by the full and wide adoption of Open Service Platforms. In fact, they will allow increased competition and market penetration because they should be built on top of royalty-free open specifications, adopting open source reference implementations, and s such allowed to be offered by multiple vendors. The Seventh Framework Programme for Research and Technology Development (FP7) has developed the FIWARE platform which has demonstrated its potential of becoming a service platform of choice, with proven potential for usage by SMEs and startups. This rises to the extent that four main ICT players in Europe with global ambition have put FIWARE in their strategy for market development. More than that, those four players announced the creation of an open to all legal entity, the FIWARE Foundation, to have more stakeholders driving the evolution of FIWARE. Well in this scope, the aim of the FI-NEXT project is to put in place all the measures necessary in order to make FIWARE materializing such a potential. This will achieved pursuing the following objectives: a) bringing FIWARE from an European Open Source project to a global Open Source Community, b) ensuring FIWARE meets the highest quality standards and best technical support, c) positioning FIWARE as the de facto standard for the development of smart applications, and d) ensuring FIWARE Lab to be a self-sustainable environment.

The IoF2020 project is dedicated to accelerate adoption of IoT for securing sufficient, safe and healthy food and to strengthen competitiveness of farming and food chains in Europe. It will consolidate Europe’s leading position in the global IoT industry by fostering a symbiotic ecosystem of farmers, food industry, technology providers and research institutes. The IoF2020 consortium of 73 partners, led by Wageningen UR and other core partners of previous key projects such as FIWARE and IoT-A, will leverage the ecosystem and architecture that was established in those projects. The heart of the project is formed by 19 use cases grouped in 5 trials with end users from the Arable, Dairy, Fruits, Vegetables and Meat verticals and IoT integrators that will demonstrate the business case of innovative IoT solutions for a large number of application areas. A lean multi-actor approach focusing on user acceptability, stakeholder engagement and sustainable business models will boost technology and market readiness levels and bring end user adoption to the next stage. This development will be enhanced by an open IoT architecture and infrastructure of reusable components based on existing standards and a security and privacy framework. Anticipating vast technological developments and emerging challenges for farming and food, the 4-year project stays agile through dynamic budgeting and adaptive decision-making by an implementation board of representatives from key user organizations. A 6 M€ mid-term open call will allow for testing intermediate results and extending the project with technical solutions and test sites. A coherent dissemination strategy for use case products and project learnings supported by leading user organizations will ensure a high market visibility and an increased learning curve. Thus IoF2020 will pave the way for data-driven farming, autonomous operations, virtual food chains and personalized nutrition for European citizens.