GÉANT announces publication of OCRE 2024 tender for pan-European cloud services procurement

This announcment was originally published by GÉANT here.

21 March 2024. GÉANT is delighted to announce the publication of the OCRE 2024 Tender for the large-scale procurement of commercial cloud services offerings for its pan-European Research and Education community. The tender aims to procure the OCRE 2024 Cloud framework agreements – the third iteration of GÉANT’s flagship cloud frameworks that since 2016 have enabled easy, convenient, and compliant consumption of commercial cloud services for R&E institutions across Europe.

The tender documents and the portal for responding to the OCRE 2024 tender can be found in the Official Journal of the European Union (OJEU): https://ted.europa.eu/en/notice/-/detail/171386-2024

Unlocking the innovative potential of commercial cloud for Research and Education across Europe

Commercial cloud services are increasingly a driving force for digital transformation and innovation in Research and Education. However, it can often be quite complex for institutions to find, acquire, and consume these services in a compliant and cost-effective manner and for cloud service providers to reach the R&E community with the right solutions.

GÉANT, with the NRENs (National Research and Education Networks) it represents, is set to address these challenges, by serving as the bridge between the Research and Education institutions and commercial cloud service providers, and thus minimising the barriers between the demand and supply sides. As a central purchasing body, GÉANT aggregates the requirements and demand of the pan-European Research and Education community into a public procurement to select suitable providers of commercial cloud services.

In particular, the OCRE 2024 tender builds on the successful experiences of the 2016 IaaS and 2020 IaaS+ (AKA OCRE 2020) frameworks, and aims to to broaden their scope and ambition, procuring a wide portfolio of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions.

The OCRE 2024 tender is currently procuring commercial cloud services in 39 Countries across Europe, thanks to the commitment of 39 NRENs who signed a Declaration of Participation, and engaged with their national communities. The tender is divided into 39 lots, each representing a country, and divided into sub-lots for different types of platforms.

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

OCRE 2024 Framework agreements will be available for all the entities that have expressed through their NREN and in due time their willingness to participate. Opting for service consumption via OCRE 2024 Framework agreements will allow institutions to save time and effort on individual procurements, minimise ingress/egress charges, provide access to discounts, exit support and to numerous other advantages. A full list of participating institutions is available here: https://clouds.geant.org/ocre2024entities/

OCRE 2024 tender preparations and next steps

The launch of the tender follows intensive preparations carried throughout 2023 and early 2024 by GÉANT and by representatives of various NRENs, particularly in the context of the “Above-the-Net services” work package in the GN5-1 project, co-funded by the European Commission under the 7-year GN5 Framework Partnership Agreement in Horizon Europe (GN5-FPA).

As a fundamental part of OCRE 2024 preparations, extensive market consultation and user engagement were conducted to inform the development of the procurement. In August 2023, GÉANT consulted economic operators on the proposed tender requirements and criteria with the issue of a Prior Information Notice (PIN). NRENs were also extensively engaged, in particular to seek case-by-case solutions to complex legal issues that up to this point were hindering the active participation in previous frameworks of GÉANT consortium partners outside the EU.

Following the tender, an intensive phase of evaluation, bidding and scoring of all the received responses will commence, with the support of a team of procurement specialists and subject matter experts from European NRENs.

OCRE 2024 Framework agreements are expected to be in place near the end of 2024 and to run for a period of five years.

Access the OCRE 2024 Tender document here: https://ted.europa.eu/en/notice/-/detail/171386-2024