The project proposes a radical solution to data hosting and delivery for the Internet of the future. The current data delivery architecture is "network centric", with content stored in data centers connected directly to Internet backbones. This approach has multiple drawbacks among which complexity of deploying data centers, power consumption, and lack of scalability are the most critical. The ECHOS project takes a totally innovative and orthogonal approach to traditional data centers, through what we call "nano" data centers, which are deployed in boxes at the edge of the network (i.e. in home gateways, set-top-boxes, etc.) and accessed using a new peer-to-peer communication infrastructure. This disruptive evolution solves most of the inconveniences of current data center based solutions, and allows for the deployment of next generation interactive applications. However, this creates a number of challenges as data has to be accessed and assembled dynamically "on-demand", in real-time. ECHOS will design and develop the nano-data center communication architecture with security and incentive mechanisms. We will demonstrate that ECHOS is a cheap and scalable alternative to the current data hosting and delivery model. The full ECHOS architecture will be implemented (i.e. an ECHOS box will be fully specified and implemented). Virtualization will be used to partition and manage box resources efficiently. Two interactive applications – multiplayer games and VoD – will be designed as a proof of concept. A large scale testbed will be deployed to evaluate the benefits and performance of ECHOS. We will contribute the ECHOS architecture to the relevant standardization bodies and to discussion groups on the design of the Internet of the Future. The project is in line with the Strategic Research Agenda (SRA) of the NEM initiative. The project is expected to lead to the commercialization of the ECHOS box. This will result in a competitive advantage for European industry and SMEs.