The EC-funded OCRE project has a remaining budget of approximately €6.5 million (including VAT) for distribution in the final adoption funding call. This is intended to be distributed across both Cloud and Earth Observation services.

How to engage in this mini-competition within the OCRE Framework

 

Cloud Services

Be awarded up to €500,000-worth of cloud infrastructure, platform and software services and drive improved agility and outcomes for your research project!

This call opened on April 26th and will close on July 12th at 13:00. Act now!

Here's how to get engaged:

  1. Identify the OCRE cloud suppliers in your country using the Cloud Catalogue
  2. Reach out to the contact/s listed for the supplier/s most likely to meet your needs.
  3. Collaborate with your supplier on the submission of a proposal which:
    • Clearly highlights your research in terms of discipline and relevance;
    • Describes how your project can demonstrate the significant impact that cloud-based digital services will have on the related activities and outcomes;
    • Shows how your research institute, department and project could tell a compelling story about digital services accelerating European research.

Please remember that your supplier will require that your institute is prepared to sign their various Terms & Conditions etc. should your project be awarded the funded services. Please engage with your procurement and legal team and have them on board.

THINK BIG!!! OCRE funded services at this scale could dramatically influence your research outputs this year!

This funding is intended to drive the adoption of cloud-based services by the European research community and therefore cannot be allocated to research projects already consuming cloud at scale from the commercial providers.

Identify your cloud supplier here  

 

EO Services

The OCRE project has published its final call for funding for Earth Observation services, which is scheduled to close on July 15th, 2022.

We encourage the research community to respond with proposals for projects that could greatly benefit from the consumption of these services. Today, researchers across all science disciplines are consuming the Copernicus Earth Observation data from an emerging market of suppliers who are quickly adding context and value to the data and providing bespoke digital services to researchers. OCRE will provide funded services from its catalogue of Earth Observation suppliers to the value of €200,000 (minimum ask is €100,000) to projects awarded, based on their relevance and ability to demonstrate the impact of these services on research activities and outcomes.
Proposals will be guided by means of an online form here.   

Examples of OCRE Earth Observation suppliers

 

The OCRE project will procure services on behalf of awarded research projects in accordance with the rules governed by its Grant Agreement with the European Commission. In addition to this, OCRE is restricted by the rules associated with the procurement of single purpose vouchers and VAT compliance within the European Union. This unfortunately prevents OCRE from applying the proven funding mechanism outside of the EU and UK.

In the first call, institutes outside of this region were able to consume awarded services for project collaborations with institutes inside the EU. If you are working within such a research collaboration, please encourage your counterparts in the EU to assist with the submission of a compelling proposal. Research projects spanning more than one country have a good chance of being awarded digital services through OCRE.

For more information on the OCRE project and current adoption funding opportunities, please access the webinar recording from April 14th.

You can also download the flyer describing the Funding and Procurement Call here