In this webinar, The Swiss Data Science Center (SDSC) and FCCN will be sharing how they have used MS Azure services including Azure AI Foundry and Azure OpenAI to develop services for their Research and Education users.

Swiss Success Story: Renku at SDSC

Renku is an open-source (Apache 2.0) data science platform from the Swiss Data Science Center. It allows researchers to build collaborative and fully reproducible projects by acting as a connecting hub for data, code, and compute resources which can come from a variety of providers and infrastructures. Users can add project members for collaboration, manage group research assets, and use the platform to showcase interactive demos of their data or models.  In this presentation, we will discuss the current state of the project and illustrate its potential with success stories from the crossroads of academia and industry.

• Speaker: Rok Roskar
• Bio: Rok is the Chief Systems Scientist and Head of Engineering at the Swiss Data Science Center. He leads the team behind Renku, an open-source collaborative data science platform. Previously, he tackled big data challenges at ETH Zürich’s Scientific IT Services. A physicist by training, Rok holds a PhD in Theoretical Astrophysics (University of Washington) and completed postdoctoral research at the University of Zürich before pivoting to research software engineering.

Portuguese Success Story: FCNN’s IAedu portal

FCCN’s IAedu portal is a national AI platform built on Azure AI Foundry and Azure OpenAI, designed to empower Portuguese universities and research institutions with secure, multimodal AI capabilities for education and research. The solution integrates GPT models, API Management, and Content Safety, ensuring privacy, compliance, and responsible AI practices while supporting interoperability with local LLMs like Amália. Phase 1 is complete, enabling pilot use cases and scaling capacity for broader adoption, marking a milestone in Portugal’s digital transformation, and setting a benchmark for academic AI innovation across Europe.

• Speakers: Fábio Cosme & Diogo Matos
• Bio: Fábio Cosme is a Systems Administrator at FCCN, the digital services unit of the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT). Since 2018, he has worked in the Advanced Infrastructure / Corporate ICT Services area, focusing on AI solution configuration, Active Directory administration, workstation management, and VoIP systems. He has contributed to key projects such as the VoIP infrastructure renewal and the IAedu initiative. Known for an analytical, calm, and problem‑solving mindset, he brings a practical, innovation‑driven approach to maintaining and improving critical national research and education digital services.
• Bio: Diogo Matos. Passionate about technology from an early age, Diogo always knew this was the field he wanted to pursue. He enjoys tackling challenges and finding solutions, regardless of the tools or technologies involved. He is currently part of the IAedu project team and collaborates on other initiatives at FCCN, maintaining a strong focus on innovation and problem-solving.

Recording

Agenda

• Intro from Deepa Shinde – Senior Director, Industry Advisor – Research & Innovation (EMEA) at  Microsoft
• Swiss Success Story
• Portuguese Success Story
• Q&A

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Cloud services and AI tools are increasingly becoming an integral component of modern research and are transforming the way science is conducted. As adoption grows, so does the need for training and support that enable institutions to make the most effective and well informed use of these capabilities.

Recognising this need, Microsoft officially launched today – with an exclusive announcement aimed at the GÉANT community – their Academic Research Skilling Hub, a dedicated portal to help researchers and research IT professionals in advancing their skills and practical use of Microsoft tools.

Specifically designed for the needs of research teams, the hub offers structured guidance, collections of resources, training courses and modules, reference materials, useful links and insights. These collections naturally include a wide range of materials on Microsoft Azure, but they also go further, by extensively covering AI and Machine Learning, ensuring institutions can develop skills in emerging areas.

Explore the hub: Academic Research Skilling | Microsoft Learn

An early announcement to the GÉANT community

With their decision to launch their Academic Research Skilling Hub in conjunction with GÉANT, Microsoft aims to reach, first and foremost, all the European research and education institutions that are already consuming Microsoft cloud services via GÉANT’s OCRE 2024 Framework. By supporting existing users, the initiative aims to help them unlock the full potential of Microsoft’s cloud and AI tools, ultimately building expertise, advancing academic work and scientific discovery, and accelerating digital transformation at a European scale.

Explore the hub and share your feedback

Microsoft’s Academic Research Skilling Hub is set to be a living site, with updates and new resources to be expected every month. As such, Microsoft invites the GÉANT community and institutions using Microsoft cloud services via OCRE 2024 to share their feedback about the hub and influence its growth and development over time.

Please send your feedback to [email protected], indicating the subject line ‘Skilling Hub feedback’.

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Loughborough University have over 15 years experience in the development of bespoke applications using Oracle APEX with over 100 application written and deployed.

This webinar will describe how the APEX no-code –> full code functionality can support all user types from non-technical to trained systems developers to support highly customisable applications for research and education.

APEX provides a native database application infrastructure that deploys within Oracle avoiding any client or browser performance bottlenecks to support wide compatibility and high performance in a heterogeneous environment typical within R&E.

Loughborough is a high-ranking UK university with circa 18,000 students. Simon Yates and his team build and maintain the university’s applications and management systems – over 100 applications during a 10 year period.

Presenters

• Simon Greenwood – Development Services Director at DSP.
  DSP is a database, cloud, AI and development partner. Simon’s team develop new and enhances existing applications, as well as providing training to teams to augment their in-house capabilities.
• Simon Yates – Head of Student Information Systems and Product Management at Loughborough University.

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The GÉANT (GN5-2) project Above-the-Net Services Incubator is excited to announce the award of its open call to four projects aimed at developing innovative Proofs of Concept for digital services in support of European Research and Education. The selected proposals address service development priorities across three areas of strategic importance for the GÉANT community: Digital Research Environment (DRE), Object Storage Infrastructure, Data Movement Infrastructure.

Led by consortia formed across GÉANT project partners, the four awarded initiatives will receive funding in the form of dedicated Person Months (PMs) within the GN5-2 project to take their concepts forward. By supporting these Proofs of Concept, the Incubator aims to foster innovation and deliver impact, reduce risks associated with new developments, and potentially expand the GÉANT community’s service portfolio.

The Incubator team thanks all applicants for the high number of high-quality submissions received this year, which reflects the GÉANT community’s desire to innovate, co-create and collaborate on the development of digital services, for the ultimate benefit of the European Research and Education community.

Meet the awarded projects

With many of the received proposals excelling in the key evaluation criteria of potential impact and innovation, the committee’s final decision took in special consideration the projects’ support to the development of at least one of the three service concept investment proposals currently being developed by the GÉANT Above-the-Net Services team:

• Digital Research Environment (DRE)
• Object Storage Infrastructure
• Data Movement Infrastructure

Get to know the four awarded projects, the organisations that will lead them, and the strategic areas they will contribute to:

PanES3 – GÉANT DRE Storage Management in a pan-European context

Organisations: SUNET, SURF   |   Areas: Object Storage; DRE

Today, managing storage for research projects is essential for nearly all research, but scaling lifecycle management across projects at a pan-European level requires integration not yet achieved. PanES3 aims to tackle this, by integrating the ever-growing portfolio of pan-European S3 research storage solutions into the Proof of Concept (PoC) implementation of the GÉANT Digital Research Environment (DRE).

Based on the SURF Research Cloud, the PoC of the GÉANT DRE is showing that it is possible to provision virtual machines in environments controlled by other NRENs, requiring only a limited amount of changes to the existing codebase. The PanES3 project aims to take the next step, by extending the DRE’s functionalities and enabling it to provision and manage storage entities (S3 buckets), which can then be managed throughout their lifecycle and hosted in policy-compliant environments.

PanES3 will leverage the knowledge and expertise of SURF and SUNET, aiming to generalise the project results and apply them to other NRENs and infrastructure providers.

Additionally, the project foresees technical support and in-kind contributions from providers Safespring and Nextcloud, and collaboration with CESNET.

Sovereign Architecture for Geo-distributed European Object Storage

Organisations: CSC, DeiC, PCSS, SURF   |   Area: Object Storage

The project aims to explore and demonstrate the key aspects and the technical feasibility of the collective deployment of a sovereign object storage infrastructure at a pan-European scale, led by NRENs.

The proposed workplan builds upon and extends the scope of the Above-the-Net service concept development task within the GÉANT (GN5-2) project, by introducing a hands-on evaluation of both the underlying technology of choice and the potential organisational and operational models for developing and managing a cross-country, shared, federated data platform.

Participating NRENs will then prepare a detailed analysis and set of conclusions drawn from the technical and operational finding, which will serve as direct input to the ongoing service concept development work within the GN5-2 project.

MUSICA-DDM – Distributed Data Management using Rucio and FTS

Organisations: ACOnet, TU Wien/ASC   |   Area: Data Movement  

This project aims to implement a scalable, automated data management and transfer system for MUSICA, Austria’s new distributed HPC infrastructure spanning Vienna, Linz, and Innsbruck. MUSICA-DDM addresses the key challenge of synchronising large datasets in distributed HPC environments and contributes a model for the broader GÉANT community.

Using the European-developed technologies Rucio and FTS (File Transfer Service), the project will not only enable policy-based data replication and high-throughput transfers across MUSICA’s geographically separated sites, but also efficient data movement to and from external sites across the GÉANT network. This supports cross-border scientific projects requiring large-scale data sharing, it facilitates integration with European research infrastructures and data commons, and it aligns with European efforts to build a federated EOSC.

SAGE4EU – Implementation of SAGE (Scalable Amplified Group Environment) into the GÉANT Network

Organisations: CESNET   |   Area: DRE

Effective research collaboration across multiple locations and countries requires suitable digital tools and shared environments that enable researchers to have both a global overview of their work and the ability to examine fine-grained details.

The Scalable Amplified Group Environment (SAGE), developed as open-source software by US universities, is designed to facilitate this kind of collaborative work. Originally intended for large-scale display walls, the latest iteration—SAGE3—extends usability across a range of devices, from immersive wall displays to desktop and laptop computers. This flexibility enables both shared lab-based collaboration and remote participation using researchers’ personal devices.

The SAGE4EU project plans to deploy at least one SAGE3 server within Europe, connect it via the GÉANT network, and integrate it with eduGAIN. Given the international nature of research teams, bringing SAGE3 into the GÉANT ecosystem and within a European context aims to offer an optimal framework for secure, high-performance collaboration.

Looking ahead

The four awarded initiatives will advance through development sprints, with larger projects expected to run until the end of 2026. Throughout this period, the Incubator team will actively monitor and report on progress, sharing the outcomes with the GÉANT project and community.

This Incubator cycle also marks an overall shift in approach, from an open-ended programme, towards a more structured initiative focused on set strategic areas. This aligns with innovation happening across the GÉANT project and community, as with the service concept developments being explored in the context of GN5-2 WP4, and with the development of the GÉANT DRE initiative and related Proofs of Concept funded by the GÉANT Innovation Programme 2025.

While this will be the only call for the Above the Net Services Incubator during GN5-2, we encourage our community to continue proposing new ideas through next edition of the GÉANT Innovation Programme, currently expected to launch in the fall of 2025.

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Following the successful OCRE 2024 Tender and the start of the OCRE 2024 Framework, we are pleased to report that as of 4 August 2025 all the OCRE 2024 contract awards notices have been successfully published on the TED (Tenders Electronic Daily) Platform, the online version of the Supplement to the Official Journal of the European Union for European public procurement, in relation to the notice 260645-2024.

All 39 award notices – one per country participating in OCRE 2024 – are now available in the TED Platform in the 24 official EU languages. The publication on TED marks the formal finalisation of the OCRE 2024 tender, ensuring transparency, accountability and legal compliance in this public procurement of pan-European scale.

Read the award notices on TED: https://ted.europa.eu/en/notice/-/detail/260645-2024/related

About the OCRE 2024 Framework

OCRE 2024 is the most recent iteration of GÉANT’s flagship cloud frameworks, running from February 2025 until 2030. Resulting from a pan-European procurement and building on the successes of its previous iterations, the OCRE 2024 Framework enables tens of thousands of European Research and Education institutions and public institutions across 39 countries to procure innovative cloud services in an easy, compliant, and cost-effective way.

The Framework delivers an impressive portfolio of 416 cloud service offerings across 17 platforms for IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS solutions. These can be browsed through the OCRE 2024 Catalogue: https://clouds.geant.org/ocre-2024-catalogue

The complete list of institutions participating in OCRE 2024, along with separate national lists, can be found at: https://clouds.geant.org/ocre2024entities/

For further information, please check the Guides to Using the Framework or contact your local NREN representative.

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Since its launch earlier this year, the OCRE 2024 Framework – the third iteration of GÉANT’s flagship Cloud Frameworks – has been gaining momentum, registering increasing adoption from Research and Education institutions and public organisations all across Europe. A few months into the Framework’s rollout, 60 participants with a shared interest in advancing the interaction between the R&E community and commercial cloud providers gathered in Utrecht over the course of two days for an official launch event.

Organised by the GÉANT (GN5-2) project Above-the-Net Services team and held at the NH Hotel Utrecht, the event brought together Cloud Service Delivery Managers (CSDMs) from European NRENs, GÉANT project members, and representatives from cloud service providers and platforms part of the Framework. The aim was to strengthen the collaboration among all parties involved, answer questions emerging from the first few months of the framework and ultimately improve delivery and accelerate implementation.

The journey and structure of the OCRE 2024 Framework

The two-days event kicked off with a welcome and introduction session by Jakob Tendel (DFN) and Maria Ristkok (EENet, Ministry of Education and Research), co-leaders of the GÉANT Clouds team within the GÉANT project.

Garvan McFeeley (HEAnet) introduced the history and context around the series of GÉANT Cloud Frameworks, reflecting on their evolution from an ambitious and bold idea into a successful, established and widely adopted initiative. He highlighted the impressive growth, in terms of countries, institutions involved and overall spending, as well as the extraordinary cross-NREN collaboration that made the framework possible, as reflected for instance in the international team that dedicated regular time across five months to score the massive OCRE 2024 tender.

A walkthrough of the OCRE 2024 Framework was provided by Monique Pellinkhof (GÉANT), who explained its scope, structure, and guiding principles. A key part of Monique’s presentation was also the detailed explanation of the three possible awarding methods under the OCRE 2024 Framework and of their permitted uses, specifically the cascade method, the mini-competition, and the desktop mini-competition. With the help of Badreddine Ajbar El Gueriri (GÉANT), the session was made even more dynamic through a short quiz, which brought energy into the room and sparked interaction.

For further information on the awarding methods please refer to the guides to using the OCRE 2024 Framework: https://clouds.geant.org/resources/

Enabling the OCRE 2024 Framework’s success

With the framework now at its third iteration and building on years of experience, the delivery chain has become a reliable and well-oiled component of the framework, connecting NRENs, institutions and service providers in a cohesive and efficient system. At the event, Eva Nestorovska (PCSS) presented the user-facing function of this chain, which plays a fundamental role in coordinating and supporting the community of European CSDMs, enabling CSDMs in their role towards local institutions, collecting feedback and stories from the community, promoting service adoption.

Leanne Walsh (HEAnet) offered a complementary view on the equally important work of the Contract Management Group (CMG), a team involving members both from GÉANT and from NRENs, answering queries from OCRE 2024 service providers and NRENs through the service desk, managing requests, taking care of day to day framework operations, providing info packs about the framework to CSDMs, coordinating the collection data and production of quarterly reports. In line with this, Branko Radojević (PCSS) introduced the Validator, a new tool aimed at streamlining reporting processes and verifying the accuracy of the data collected.

The perspective of service providers – collaboration, solutions, and success stories

The event welcomed strong participation from representatives of all the Original Infrastructure Providers (OIPs), hyperscaler platforms, and suppliers involved in the framework, with several taking stage to present their offerings, strategic plans, and their initial or continued experience with the GÉANT Cloud Frameworks.

A recurring theme across presentations was the commitment to European digital sovereignty, with both global and European providers outlining their efforts towards this relevant theme. Sustainability and compliance were also central topics, as well as the importance of strategic collaboration with GÉANT and with the community of European NRENs, in order to realise the framework’s full potential, deliver impact, share success stories, and drive continuous improvement together.

Ultimately, the event provided a productive forum for dialogue and feedback exchange, including a 1.5 hour discussion welcomed with enthusiasm and fresh ideas by representatives of NRENs and commercial providers alike, leaving many eager to repeat a similar event in the future. Opportunities for direct engagement between CSDMs and service providers were also provided throughout the two days in the form of one-to-one meetings, further strengthening collaboration across the framework.

The OCRE 2024 Framework is now available for tens of thousands of research and education institutions and public organisations in 39 countries. Visit the OCRE 2024 Catalogue to discover all available cloud service offerings: https://clouds.geant.org/ocre-2024-catalogue

The post Bridging R&E and Industry at the OCRE 2024 Framework launch event first appeared on GÉANT Cloud Services.

Following on a longstanding and successful collaboration, GÉANT and EUNIS (European University Information Systems) recently held an online workshop focused on the OCRE 2024 Framework and on the GÉANT Community Strategy for Above-the-Net Services. This regular series of joint events brings together experts and users from NRENs and institutions to share knowledge and resources.

Under the Hood of OCRE 2024

The first part of the workshop featured presentations from Monique Pellinkhof (GÉANT) and Garvan McFeeley (HEAnet), the GÉANT project leads overseeing the preparation, execution and delivery of the OCRE 2024 tender, as well as the management of OCRE 2024 contracts.

Their presentations covered the Framework’s background, from the initial market engagement phase to the active procurement, which resulted in the signing of 416 framework agreements. This was followed by the evolution of the tender’s scope and lot structure, consisting of 39 country-specific lots and sub-lots for each platform. While the framework continues to be aimed primarily towards European research and education institutions, the new OCRE 2024 Framework is also open to public organisations where they are among the respective NREN’s customers.

The presentation also emphasised the many benefits of the framework – most notably its ease of use. Through the OCRE 2024 Framework, institutions can procure commercial cloud services in a simple, quick and compliant way. They can then easily set up their own cloud environments and get local training based on their needs and requirements. Another key advantage is economic: framework services  are offered with significant discounts and at advantageous terms and conditions.

Sustainability was also taken into high consideration during the procurement process. For instance, the OCRE 2024 tender set minimum requirements around the use of renewable energy, with increasing thresholds over time, and suppliers were scored on effective power usage.

The three awarding methods available under the framework were also covered: cascade, mini competition and desktop mini-competition. Attendees were encouraged to access the documentation, review the offerings, and start procuring services via the framework.

The scale and growth of the GÉANT Cloud Frameworks

Garvan McFeeley (HEAnet), next on the virtual stage, offered participants a look at the gargantuan effort involved in evaluating and scoring the mass amount of bids received in response to the OCRE 2024 tender. The scale of the task was impressive, involving a dedicated cross-NREN team of 14 people working for three days a week over five months to read and assess more than 12,000 documents.

He proudly highlighted the progress made since the first GÉANT Cloud Framework back in 2016, as well as the growth in terms of countries, institutions involved and overall spending. Excitement about the future was expressed, with expectations of even greater uptake, and satisfaction with the balanced mix of platforms and providers per country available through the Framework, including a consistent number of European platforms.

An Eye on the Future

In the second part of the workshop Jan Meijer (Sikt) led a discussion on long-term strategic planning to identify the most effective, impactful, and sustainable solutions for European research and education.

After an introduction on the work that led to the recent GÉANT Community Strategy for Above-the-Net Services, the broad analysis of the variegated landscape of Research and Education organisations, pan-European research infrastructures, consortia, larger storage processing facilities, HPC sites was covered. Also included were the consideration on policy pushes towards a single European Research Area and single European Learning Area.

The strategy acknowledged the great traction and continued success of the collective procurement of cloud services, but also noted that on the service development side, there is still limited evidence of the effectiveness of the collective development model. The added value of such initiatives remains in fact an open question, influenced by budgets and politics, and depending on ongoing challenges like data autonomy and digital sovereignty.

Interestingly, while at a national level the size of the country defines the ceiling in terms of budget, number of institutions and market size, the strength of the Research and Education Networking community lies in its market aggregation and in its ability to scale and share expertise and resources. At the same time, expectations on NRENs and institutions around increased service quality and cost-effectiveness continue to grow, creating pressure to rethink how services are developed and delivered.

As part of the GN5-2 project, a new Above-the-Net services strategy team is now exploring Proofs of Concept on collective development initiatives aimed at helping R&E institutions access and make the most of modern cloud infrastructures. Rather than spending effort on numerous small initiatives, the aim is now to join forces in fewer and more impactful initiatives, supporting public values alongside technical infrastructures, and with a long-term view.

The event ended with a brief survey to gather topics for future joint workshops between GÉANT and EUNIS. Feel free to suggest a topic for one of our future events via our contact form: https://clouds.geant.org/contact

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The GÉANT (GN5-2) Project’s Above-the-Net Services incubator is looking for practical proposals around three areas of service concept investment being developed by the GN5-2 Above-the-Net Services team. These are:

• Digital Research Environment (DRE)
• Object Storage Infrastructure
• Data Movement Infrastructure

Through the incubator, the GN5-2 project will offer person months (PMs) to project partners to develop service Proof-of-Concepts with the eventual aim of expanding the GÉANT community’s portfolio of Above-the-Net services.

The initiative ultimately aims to reduce risks associated with the development of innovative ideas before committing resources on the level of a project task or GÉANT service.

ACT NOW!

The call is now open as of 1 May 2025 and will close for proposals on 30 June 2025. This gives interested parties eight weeks to prepare their proposals, fill in the template (available here) and submit their applications.

Submit your proposals

The incubator will award 38 PMs across two to four proposals, based on potential impact, innovation, and overall value to the three service concept development areas.

BE CREATIVE!

Formulate a hypothesis you wish to test that supports one or more of the following service concept development areas:

1. Digital Research Environment (DRE)
   GÉANT member NRENs are increasingly compelled to respond to the ever-evolving digital needs of their national open science communities. This need is driven by local research governing bodies, national funders, and by the European Commission, in their support for the EOSC and its proposed node structures.
   One of the solutions developed by SURF to tackle this challenge is the SURF Research Cloud, a digital services distribution platform underpinned by community AAI, allowing scientists and researchers to easily build virtual research environments, collaborate on projects across teams and institutions, and select and consume digital services against a pre-defined budget or wallet. This highly functional platform is multi-tenant by nature and thus presents an opportunity for broader use by GÉANT and other NRENs within the community.
   In line with this, the GÉANT Innovation Programme in 2025 is supporting the development of a pilot GÉANT Digital Research Environment (DRE) based on the SURF Research Cloud, to be potentially complemented with a collective service offering. NREN tenancies of the DRE platform would significantly enhance the NREN’s ability to support their local research community with easy access to national, institutional and commercial services through a consistent interface, well integrated with other NREN assets. NREN tenancies are also likely to be useful technical building blocks for national or thematic nodes of the EOSC Federation currently taking shape. Four NRENs are already participating in related Proof-of-Concepts, to establish their tenancies on the GÉANT DRE and add their services and resources to the ecosystem, aiming to demonstrate the vast potential of this initiative.
2. A pan-European sovereign Object-Storage Infrastructure
   European data sovereignty is highly topical. As the global geopolitical situation shifts towards regional autonomy, the protection of regional research data becomes more dependent on the development of localised, bespoke, secure storage solutions. At the same time, there is a consistent need for in-situ, FAIR sharing of research data within Europe. The European Commission is also  placing growing focus on the development of regional data economy and on large-scale use of data-dependent Artificial Intelligence within the European public sector. All these factors point to a necessity for standardisation in our approach towards data storage, sharing, governance, and policy.
   While numerous platforms supporting siloed sync and share, object, and general file storage are already available within the NREN community, interoperability and standardisation are still lacking.
   There is now a concrete opportunity for NRENs to collaborate on a collectively procured, built, and managed pan-European platform, offering simple S3 object storage interfaces, deployed in a distributed way, and supporting digital sovereignty requirements. This would target research data repositories with the promise of providing better and cheaper low-level storage by leveraging pan-European economies of scale and of scope. This effort would also require addressing significant organisational and technical challenges, as trans-national long-distance replication between storage pods, in order to make this concept a reality.
3. A standardised and sovereign Research Data Movement Infrastructure
   Although the concept of data visitation is increasing in popularity, the exploitation of research and education networking infrastructures for the migration of massive research data workloads remains a priority. For instance, most European HPC centres still require data workloads to visit the compute platform and not vice versa.
   While there are many data transfer solutions available, none of these is yet widely deployed in an optimised fashion to allow all researchers to fully leverage the available network capability. Most solutions also suffer from sub-optimal user experiences, and the few available platforms that may fulfil the bespoke requirements of global researchers do not guarantee compliance with European data processing regulations from a regional sovereignty perspective.
   Ultimately, researchers wanting to move more than a couple of terabytes often end up requiring dedicated support by specialists. In a time where all research has gone digital with ever increasing amounts of research data, this needs to change.
   The European NREN community has now a real opportunity to make the difference in this domain, by collaborating on the development and evolution of such infrastructure.

With the GÉANT community developing investment proposals for these shared, open-source services, the opportunities for innovation are ENDLESS!

Eligibility and rules of participation

The call is limited to GN5-2 project partners as the cost of concept development will be covered by project person months made available specifically for this purpose. Please be clear on your budget (required person months) and timeline, keeping in mind that projects will need to be completed by Q1 of 2027.

The call also allows the forming of a collaboration of partners within the GN5-2 project in order to harness all the skills necessary to develop and demonstrate the proposed concepts. It is anticipated that developments will occur in 4-month sprints.

Each of the partners in any awarded proposal will simply need to sign a MoU committing the time charged against PMs reallocated to the partner that will be focused on Proof-of-Concept (PoC) development. Each PoC will be executed in close coordination with the GN5-2 Above-the-Net service concept development team to ensure highest relevance of PoC results for the service concept developments.

Would you like to hear more about the 2025 edition of GÉANT’s Above-the-Net Services Incubator? Don’t miss the dedicated infoshare on 12 May 2025, at 10:00 CEST: https://events.geant.org/event/1893/

For additional information on either of the service types or if you wish to discuss your proposed hypothesis and approach, please reach out to the Above-the-Net Services Incubator team at [email protected].

The post GÉANT Project Above-the-Net Services Incubator: Call for Proposals first appeared on GÉANT Cloud Services.

The GÉANT Innovation Programme is excited to announce the award of its entire 2025 fund to the development of a GÉANT Digital Research Environment (DRE) and of a series of related Proof of Concepts. Based on the SURF Research Cloud, this digital platform will allow researchers and research organisations within NREN communities to build virtual research environments, get access to national and regional infrastructure and digital services, and collaborate on projects across teams and institutions in different countries.

The initiative will see the collaboration of SURF and GÉANT, with SURF leading technical developments and support to NRENs and GÉANT overseeing the project’s coordination. Additionally, four NRENs – SUNET, Switch, HEAnet, Sikt – will contribute to the initiative by configuring Proof of Concepts to establish national tenancies of the GÉANT DRE, add their services and resources to the ecosystem, and allocate them to local research projects.

The GÉANT Innovation Programme’s decision to fund a broader, ambitious project for its 2025 edition, rather than multiple smaller proposals, reflects the programme’s commitment to supporting innovative ideas with the potential to deliver strategic impact and digital transformation to the entire R&E community. Furthermore, narrowing the focus on a single award for this year gave the Innovation Programme team ample time to develop a new timeline and approach for the 2026 edition, which is intended to launch in the fall of 2025.

This initiative is fully aligned with the current GÉANT community strategy for ‘above-the-net services’, focused on the collaborative development of a set of services in support of the European R&E community by the NRENs.

“GÉANT has a mandate to promote co-creation through collaboration within its association of NRENs. This enables all NRENs to share their innovative open-source developments and contribute towards the value that the GÉANT community adds to the entire European R&E community.” – Dave Heyns, GÉANT.

An ambitious project to support the whole research data lifecycle

On top of the network, security, and trust and identity services offered by GÉANT and the NRENs, researchers are extensively using cloud-based services throughout the research data lifecycle. Offered both by GÉANT, NRENs, research infrastructures, and R&E institutions, or by commercial providers, these services include data storage and management, computational and HPC resources, tools for data analysis, data visualisation, and machine learning, collaboration tools, secure file transfer, data publishing and preservation services, electronic lab notebooks, to name a few. However, the current ecosystem of services remains fragmented, varied, and not fully integrated.

The GÉANT DRE initiative will allow GÉANT and its member NRENs to facilitate the consumption of a broad and standardised suite of hybrid services – both community and commercial cloud-based – in a federated environment, and underpinned by our core networks, security, and authentication services. The platform aims to enable access to- and management of digital services via researcher identity authentication, as well as optimisation and monitoring of service consumption and collaboration on research projects based on allocation defined within a research project ‘wallet’.

Designed with a key focus on digital sovereignty and institutional autonomy, the GÉANT DRE aims to support both hosting in a regional or ‘multi-tenant mode’ by GÉANT or by an NREN, or deployment at a national level, in a single-tenant mode. Current and planned developments are also placing particular consideration on enablement of open science and FAIR sharing of research data, as well as interoperability with the EOSC EU Node, thus also supporting the involvement of NRENs as EOSC national nodes.

Developing the GÉANT DRE

The GÉANT DRE initiative started with a pilot project in November 2024, also funded by the GÉANT Innovation Programme with an initial award of EUR 50,000. This allowed SURF to kick-start the preparatory work, to prove the SURF Research Cloud’s multi-tenancy capabilities across all functional elements, to align the SURF Research Access Management (SRAM) platform with MyAccessId and with the EOSC EU node AAI, and finally to demonstrate interoperability with the EOSC EU node.

The recent award of EUR 230,000 for this year’s edition of the GÉANT Innovation Programme will cover further developments throughout 2025, allowing SURF to support the configuration and testing of NREN tenancies on the GÉANT DRE, and Proof of Concepts for participating NRENs to use the GÉANT DRE for the distribution of both local and regional services to their local research constituencies.

During the first ongoing project sprint, SURF is currently assessing the development needed for full platform multi-tenancy, progressing the work on interoperability with the EOSC EU Node, and starting to guide participating NRENs through the process of tenancy configuration, services registration, engagement of institutions and projects, and wallet building.

“The SURF Research Cloud team is pleased to see our solution being adopted by other NRENs, underscoring its value in building trusted, cross-border research infrastructures. This momentum reflects the growing importance of open-source collaboration, and we look forward to advancing this vision further in partnership with EOSC.” – Ivar Janmaat, SURF.

NREN Proof of Concepts

Throughout 2025, four other NRENs will join the initiative, contributing with their own funding to establish Proof of Concept tenancies on the GÉANT DRE, in a progressive series of sprint cycles. Leading the way, the Swedish NREN SUNET is now at work to configure its tenancy during the first half of the year, instantiating infrastructure and applications in SUNET-operated datacentres, as well as connections to the SUNET Drive storage and file sharing service. This first Proof of Concept will be demonstrated at TNC25, during the Community Hub session “Beyond the Net: Enabling Research Collaboration” on Wednesday 11 June, from 09:00 to 10:30 BST.

Development sprints throughout the second half of the year will then involve the Swiss NREN Switch, seeking to onboard services within the Switch cloud portfolio and particularly the Switch Drive, the Irish NREN HEAnet, looking at an integration of national and institutional computing and storage services, and the Norwegian NREN Sikt, particularly seeking to distribute through the GÉANT DRE the data centre services from the national HPC infrastructure SIGMA2, and access to HPC resources and storage solutions. All involved NRENs will share their experiences with the GÉANT DRE towards the end of the project.

With this first set of Proof of Concepts the project aims to highlight the value of the GÉANT DRE’s service distribution mechanism and pave the way for further onboarding of NRENs within the GÉANT community. In line with this, the project reserved a small percentage of its funding to support the development of an additional Proof of Concept involving an emerging or less resourced NREN, for the configuration of a national tenancy and for the distribution of a single service focused on open science and supported either by the NREN or by one of its member institutions. The project team will share more details about this opportunity and the evaluation process ahead of SUNET’s Proof of Concept at TNC25 and will identify potential participants based on the community response to the demonstration.

About the GÉANT Innovation Programme

Launched in February 2021, the GÉANT Innovation Programme has funded various projects covering a range of thematic areas, including Network and Network Technologies, Above the Net, Trust and Identity, Security, and Digital Health. The GÉANT Innovation Programme facilitates the opportunity to test new ideas and make a real difference in advancing not only technology, but also business practices, human capital, and sustainability for, and by, the GÉANT community. Examples of previous innovation developed within the GÉANT community include widely adopted services, such as eduroam, eduVPN, and eduMEET.

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GÉANT and EUNIS – the European University Information Systems organisation – will hold a joint online workshop on the OCRE 2024 Framework

11 April 2025
10:00 – 12:00 CEST

Agenda

• OCRE 2024 Framework
  Garvan McFeeley (HEAnet) and Monique Pellinkhof (GÉANT) will explain the basics of how the framework operates, outline its benefits and offerings, and describe step-by-step the different roles and processes
• GEANT Cloud Strategy
  Jan Meijer (Sikt) will present and lead a discussion on the Cloud Strategy
• Maria Ristkok (EENet, Ministry of Education and Research, and GÉANT Cloud Team) and Denise Dittrich (EUNIS) will give the introductory address.

Register here

The post GÉANT-EUNIS Joint Workshop: OCRE 2024 Framework first appeared on GÉANT Cloud Services.