Towards the OCRE 2024 Framework – Everything you need to know about the transition from current to upcoming cloud framework agreements

This announcment was originally published by GÉANT here.

Since 2016, GÉANT’s flagship cloud frameworks have fostered digital transformation across Europe, by enabling easy, convenient, and compliant consumption of commercial cloud services for Research and Education (R&E) institutions. In this article, we provide a comprehensive update on the current and upcoming cloud service agreements for the pan-European R&E community. 

An update on the OCRE 2024 Framework (available from February 2025)

Following an intensive phase of evaluation of tender responses, we are pleased to share with our community that the new GÉANT cloud framework – OCRE 2024 – is now in the final stages of preparation. The new framework agreements are expected to become available on 3 February 2025 and will be in place for a period of five years.

From that date, all the organisations that had expressed through their NREN their willingness to participate will be able to procure cloud services via the OCRE 2024 Framework agreements, in a compliant, easy and cost-effective way. The full list of OCRE 2024 participating institutions is available here: https://clouds.geant.org/ocre2024entities

Cloud service offerings in the OCRE 2024 Framework will be available in 39 countries across Europe, each with its own portfolio of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions.

Map of countries participating in OCRE 2024 (in dark green)

The OCRE 2024 Framework will incorporate several improvements in response to community feedback, aiming to better address the needs of the R&E community. Some key improvements include:

• Enhanced Compliance: With a focus on sustainability, privacy, security, adherence to European laws and regulations and reporting.
• Improved Commercial Terms: Including better & minimum discounts, reduced egress costs, local billing and more extensive access to complimentary training and support resources. 

Additionally, the OCRE 2024 Framework will continue to provide and support important features, guarantees and support mechanisms already covered by the previous framework, such as – to name a few – free ingress, guaranteed exit support, identity management (including support to eduGAIN), peering connection with GÉANT and NRENs, root access, CRF invoicing, split billing, Bring Your Own Licence (BYOL), shared use and other support services.

We believe this updated Framework will provide even greater value and support for the cloud service needs of R&E institutions across Europe.

Current Framework agreements (OCRE 2020)

The current OCRE 2020 framework, facilitated by GÉANT and European NRENs, lasts from 1 December 2020 until 30 November 2024. As such, institutions participating in OCRE 2020 will still be able to contract new Call of Contracts with an OCRE 2020 supplier until 30 November for the maximum of four years.

For institutions that are already utilising existing framework agreements and contracting under a valid Call off Contract that is almost expiring, it will still be possible up until 30 November 2024 to sign a contract extension for a maximum period of up to four years, or to opt for termination upon agreement to switch to a new contract under the OCRE 2024 Framework.

Given that many institutions are already leveraging Call off Contracts under the OCRE 2020 Framework, these extensions – if needed – may be relatively straightforward to implement and can serve as an interim solution during any necessary transition period towards the new OCRE 2024 Framework.

If you have any questions or need further clarification, please do not hesitate to reach out to your local NREN representative or GÉANT for more details on the transition between OCRE 2020 and OCRE 2024 and the next steps.