The ARCADIA project aims to provide a novel reconfigurable by design highly distributed applications’ development paradigm over programmable infrastructure. The main objective is to facilitate application developers to develop software that is able to take advantage of the underlying infrastructure, while in parallel support the deployment and dynamic configuration of applications in an optimal and autonomic manner.

The ARCADIA partners are working on delivering the first version of the novel, powerful tool that will allow software developers to take full advantage of the modern network and computer infrastructures. The majority of these infrastructures offer a wide range of configuration options and capabilities that can be programmed using the suitable commands or applications. Nowadays, the behaviour of devices and equipment can be deeply affected programmatically, concerning their energy efficiency, their flexibility in adapting to changing conditions and their functionality in general. But in most cases, this also requires a deep knowledge of vendor specific tools or technology specific parameters, while it is not humanly possible to intervene every time a new situation has arisen.

The ARCADIA platform will introduce an innovative way of tackling such issues. The basis will be a model describing all the characteristics of the infrastructure and the related actions that can be performed. The model will also include a great variety of application features that the developer would like his application to have. By using a well defined annotation language, the developer will be in position to label the application needs and to control its behaviour in a high level way. E.g. if requirement for only local access is set, the platform will automatically make the necessary network security settings and will restrict the incoming and outgoing traffic of the application.The main role in this process belongs to the Smart Controller, the entity that includes functionality for configuring, deploying and reconfiguring if needed a Highly Distributed Application. In particular, it has the ability of interpreting the ARCADIA metadata and translating it into specific actions concerning the underlying resources. There is also the capability to communicate with another Smart Controller in case more resources are needed, without any human intervention. And of course, the platform is monitoring everything so as to guarantee that the optimum configuration has been selected, the application requirements are met and any policies set by the infrastructure provider are respected.

The partners of the project consortium envisage that the final outcome will offer to application developers the desired simplicity in building solutions with enhanced flexibility, availability and security characteristics. It is expected that ARCADIA platform will be warmly adopted by the programmers community, since it can provide independence from vendor specific tools, reduced product development costs and The ARCADIA project aims to provide a novel reconfigurable by design highly distributed applications’ development paradigm over programmable infrastructure. The main objective is to facilitate application developers to develop software that is able to take advantage of the underlying infrastructure, while in parallel support the deployment and dynamic configuration of applications in an optimal and autonomic manner. accelerated time to market, as well as access to useful network and service functions in a unified and easy to use way, just by incorporating some relevant annotations into the source code, according to the ARCADIA software development paradigm.

Funded by European Commission under Horizon 2020 Programme, the ARCADIA project involves an European-wide network of research centres and private companies and public institutions, such as the Insight Centre for Data Analytics of the National University of Ireland (NUIG), the Stiftelsen SINTEF from Norway, the Technische Universität Berlin (TUB) from Germany, the Italian interuniversity Consortium for telecommunications (CNIT), the University of Ljubljana, GIOUMPITEK – Meleti SchediasmosYlopoiisi kai Polisi Ergon Pliroforikis EPE (UBITECH) and the WINGS ICT Solutions Information & Communication Technologies EPE (WINGS), both from Greece the ADITESS Advanced Integrated Technology Solutions and Services Ltd (ADITESS), from Cyprus and Maggioli S.p.A. from Italy.