As Europe moves toward a new digital paradigm, distributed intelligence, and hyper-connected services, it becomes essential to provide tools and mechanisms that enable applications to operate seamlessly across the entire computing continuum. ENACT responds to this need by establishing a coherent set of objectives that together form the technological backbone for next-generation cognitive services. These objectives are designed not only to address current limitations in cloud-edge interoperability, orchestration, and deployment but also to create the conditions for autonomous, adaptive, and resilient digital environments capable of supporting the demands of emerging content-intensive applications.
At the core of ENACT’s mission is the goal of optimizing the execution of distributed applications across cloud, edge, and far-edge resources. This involves delivering new dynamic modelling environments capable of capturing the complexity of distributed infrastructures and representing them in a way that supports self-discovery, context awareness, and automated decision-making. By integrating telemetry data, real-time analytics, and human-centric interaction tools, ENACT enables infrastructure engineers and administrators to understand the behavior of resources and applications under varying conditions. This deep visibility into the continuum provides the foundation for a new class of orchestration approaches that are proactive rather than reactive.
Equally important is the development of AI-based orchestration and resource management mechanisms. ENACT leverages Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) to infer optimal resource allocation, evaluate the probability of performance degradation, and proactively adjust the configuration of distributed applications. These AI models play a central role in identifying the most suitable compute nodes for specific tasks, determining when and where to migrate workloads, and predicting potential inefficiencies before they impact user experience. Alongside GNN-based reasoning, ENACT integrates Deep Reinforcement Learning agents capable of continuously improving orchestration strategies through iterative learning across heterogeneous execution contexts.
A third major pillar of the project revolves around adaptive edge-to-cloud scheduling, particularly in scenarios requiring high responsiveness and scalable coordination. ENACT introduces a next-generation scheduling layer that builds upon the Kubernetes framework, enabling intelligent placement of workloads based on energy consumption, latency constraints, mobility patterns, and resource availability. This distributed scheduler ensures that even the most demanding applications can sustain performance as workloads evolve or shift geographically.
ENACT’s objectives also address the complexity of application deployment and lifecycle management in hyper-distributed environments. The project is developing an Application Programming Model (APM) tailored for cognitive microservices, allowing developers to build, integrate, and manage advanced AI-powered functionalities. This includes tools for state management, communication mechanisms, awareness services, and dynamic reconfiguration, supporting a new generation of applications that can autonomously adjust to the conditions of the continuum.
Security and provisioning likewise play a critical role in ENACT’s roadmap. The project introduces Zero-Touch Provisioning (ZTP) methods and advanced Software-Defined Networking to guarantee interoperability, reduce manual configuration, and enable secure onboarding of devices and services to the continuum. These capabilities are essential for supporting large-scale deployments in environments where the number of nodes, data sources, and interactions grows exponentially.
Taken together, ENACT’s objectives outline a comprehensive strategy for advancing Europe’s capacity to develop, deploy, and sustain cognitive, autonomous, and digital services. Through dynamic modelling, AI-powered orchestration, adaptive scheduling, programmable networking, secure provisioning, and advanced development toolkits, ENACT builds the technological bridge needed to transform fragmented infrastructures into an intelligent, self-optimizing ecosystem. This is the foundation upon which Europe can construct its next generation of distributed services that are efficient, resilient, and deeply aligned with the vision of a competitive, sovereign, and forward-looking digital landscape.