LAST CALL: 4 Oct. Deadline for Interested Buyer Group Coordinators to Sign Up

Organisations interested in acting as a buyer group coordinator as part of the OCRE Tender have until 4 October 2019, 18:00 CET to express interest procuring and potential eligibility for an adoption co-funding initiative. 

Buyer groups are groups of organisations that have joined together to procure cloud and digital Earth Observation services and solutions and are led by a coordinating organisation.

€2.25 million in Adoption Funding for Buyer Groups

OCRE will review applications for the 50% co-funding of these services on behalf of eligible research initiatives from buyer groups who have signed up for the OCRE tender and have indicated their interest before the deadline of 4 October 2019, 18:00 CET. 

€2.25 million for usage of cloud resources are available for buyer groups who collectively sign-up for the OCRE tender and commit to consuming cloud services via OCRE in 2020. Buyer group coordinators can express interest now to sign up. Note that this does not yet constitute a commitment to consume cloud services, but is merely an expression of interest. 

Coordinating Buyer Groups in the OCRE Tender

The buyer group coordinator plays an important role in the tender preparation by gathering the needs of the organisations under their buyer group, aggregating demand and ensuring their participating institutions are listed in OCRE's tender documentation.

After the OCRE tender is completed and the framework agreements are available, the buyer group coordinator will be involved in the service consumption as well, by:

• Making the contracts available to the group members 
• And optionally, by acting as a lead buyer, where the coordinator purchases services from suppliers and then distributes the acquired resources to the group members 

Types of Buyer Groups

OCRE deals primarily with two types of buyer groups. National or international buyer groups that represent a broad community of research and education institutions and thematic buyer groups where the institutions come primarily from the same research domain.

After expressing interest, now what?

Starting 30 September 2019, OCRE will begin gathering further information from interested buyer group coordinators asking for the procuring entity and primary contact, their estimated commitment over the duration of the framework agreements and to list all the entities included in the buyer group.

When a buyer group requests OCRE to be included in the tender, OCRE will also assess whether this group represents the largest scale and/or most explicit commitment, or whether there is another larger buyer group in place, where this group can become a part of, to bundle demand.

Express interest to sign up in the OCRE Tender as a Buyer Group!