MORPHEMIC – Modelling and Orchestrating Polymorphic Applications in the Cloud

Project acronym:

MORPHEMIC

Programme:

Horizon 2020 – Industrial Leadership – ICT

Funding:

Funded by the European Union under Horizon 2020

Duration:

1 January 2020 – 31 December 2022

Total project budget:

€4,988,693.75

Funding support for 7bulls.com:

€714,375.00

Website:

https://www.morphemic.cloud/

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CONTEXT AND CHALLENGE

Modern cloud applications increasingly operate across multi-cloud platforms and heterogeneous computing resources, including CPUs, GPUs, FPGAs, and edge infrastructure. In such environments, workloads are dynamic, unpredictable, and sensitive to performance, latency, and cost constraints.

Traditional cloud orchestration approaches are largely reactive. They rely on predefined rules and thresholds, which limits their ability to respond effectively to sudden workload changes, resource contention, or emerging failures. As a result, applications may scale too late, allocate suboptimal resources, or fail to adapt to changing execution conditions.

MORPHEMIC addresses this challenge by introducing a new approach to cloud application management, in which applications are designed to adapt proactively to their environment rather than respond after problems occur.

See results and impact

Project objective

The objective of the MORPHEMIC project was to enable polymorphic applications – applications capable of reshaping their structure, components, and runtime behaviour in response to changing conditions.

The project aimed to combine model-driven orchestration, predictive analytics, and automated reconfiguration to allow applications to optimise performance, resilience, and resource usage dynamically across multi-cloud and heterogeneous computing environments.

Scope and approach

MORPHEMIC was implemented as a Horizon 2020 research and innovation project running from 2020 to 2022, delivered by a European consortium of research institutions, technology providers, and industry partners.

The project extends the MELODIC platform with new capabilities for modelling, forecasting, and orchestration of polymorphic applications. Rather than binding applications to a single deployment model, MORPHEMIC enables multiple alternative execution architectures to be defined and selected dynamically at runtime.

Within the consortium, 7bulls.com contributed to the engineering and integration of cloud orchestration and adaptation mechanisms, supporting the practical deployment of MORPHEMIC’s concepts across complex cloud infrastructures.

Industrial Research

Polymorphic application execution

At the core of MORPHEMIC is polymorphic modelling, which allows applications to describe multiple execution configurations and architectural variants.

Based on information about workload behaviour, resource availability, and system conditions, applications can switch between these configurations during runtime to adjust execution and resource allocation.

Technical focus

The MORPHEMIC platform integrates:

polymorphic modelling of alternative execution architectures
forecasting mechanisms for workload and resource conditions
optimisation mechanisms for performance and cost-aware configuration selection
orchestration of heterogeneous resources, including CPUs, GPUs, FPGAs, and edge infrastructure
self-reconfiguration mechanisms supporting runtime adaptation

Together, these capabilities enable adaptive execution of applications across heterogeneous cloud environments.

Experimental Development

MORPHEMIC supports domains requiring dynamic and performance-sensitive execution, including:

AI and machine learning workloads
healthcare and data-intensive applications
telecommunications and network services
industrial and cloud-native systems

Target users

MORPHEMIC is designed for organisations operating complex cloud applications, including:

teams managing multi-cloud and heterogeneous infrastructures
organisations running performance-critical and adaptive workloads
architects and operators seeking model-driven and adaptive cloud orchestration

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Results and impact

Results and outcomes

The MORPHEMIC project delivers a cloud-native environment that enables applications to adapt their architecture and execution across multi-cloud and heterogeneous infrastructures.

By integrating polymorphic modelling, forecasting, and automated orchestration, the project supports more efficient resource usage, improved resilience, and adaptive execution of cloud applications.

MORPHEMIC was delivered by a European consortium including:

University of Oslo
Foundation for Research and Technology Hellas (FORTH)
Softeam Group
InAccel
ICCS
Engineering Ingegneria Informatica
University of Piraeus Research Center
Activeeon
IS-Wireless
Lausanne University Hospital
Icon Technology & Process Consulting
7bulls.com

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This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation program under grant agreement No. 871643.