OCRE IaaS+ Tender Closed

OCRE published its OCRE IaaS+ Tender in the Official Journal of the EU on 16 April 2020. Interested bidders were invited to respond before the deadline of 23 June, 2020, 11.00 CEST. 

The estimated total value is €600 million and is executed by OCRE's coordinator, GEANT. The tender is conducted through an open procedure and is divided in 40 lots. Each lot represents one country. Per lot, a number of frameworks can be awarded.

Following the publication of the OCRE IaaS+ Tender, OCRE will then publish the OCRE Tender for digital Earth observation services. 

Estimated value per lot vary be significantly. See the Tender Document for more details!

OCRE Tenders

At present, OCRE envisions the publication of at least two tenders, one for IaaS+ services and another for digital Earth Observation services. The tenders are executed by GEANT as the coordinator of the OCRE project. Interested service providers will be informed of the publication of the tender via email sent to the OCRE community network and its social channels such as LinkedIn. 

The tenders will be conducted in accordance with the 2014/24/EU procurement directive and will result in framework agreements with all suppliers who qualify (a portfolio of services). The framework agreements will be valid for four years up until 2024 and will be signed by GÉANT. This ensures availability beyond the OCRE project duration.

The providers selected in the tenders will become an integral part of the service catalogue of the European Open Science Cloud, envisioned to be a single marketplace for digital services for all European researchers.

Additionally, providers will be connected to the GÉANT data network and the community’s single sign-on (SSO) systems, bringing them into the heart of the research community’s ICT ecosystem.

IaaS+ Tender & Cloud Funding for Research Announcement Report

This OCRE Announcement Report is divided in three parts to summarise the community requirements that came out of OCRE’s requirements gathering activities, and to communicate the OCRE IaaS+ Tender and the OCRE Cloud Funding for Research. The OCRE IaaS+ Tender part is compiled primarily from Volume 0 of the OCRE IaaS+ Tender documentation and communicates the IaaS+ Tender launched by the OCRE project and executed by GÉANT, as the coordinator of OCRE.

The official announcement and link to the texts of the OCRE IaaS+ Tender can be found at the eProcurement Portal.

This Official Journal of the EU (OJEU) notice has also been published and can be accessed in this link.

The OCRE Cloud Funding for Research part focuses on the adoption funding opportunity provided by OCRE for research projects to use on resulting services from the OCRE IaaS+ Tender. It identifies the high-level criteria for selection and how interested research institutions can keep informed on developments as they are communicated.

Download Now!

Tender developments

OCRE will engage with both users and suppliers to keep all stakeholders informed of the latest developments. Take a look at some of the activities that led up to the publication of the tender:

• A Suppliers F2F Session was held in March 2019 gathering some of the largest cloud providers
• A requirements workshop was organised by OCRE and EARSC which was attended by 42 different EO and cloud companies
• Requirements were gathered for commodity cloud and for Earth observation services and were published in two separate reports. 
• A pre-final tender, or the Prior Information Notice was given to registered interested suppliers in August 1, 2019 to provide a sneek peek to the commodity cloud tender requirements
• Between Q2 and Q4 2019, OCRE launched a call for expressions of interest from individual institutions, buyer groups and national research and education networks (NRENs) to be listed in the OCRE tender as potential users of the services to be procured through the tender. This resulted in institutions from at least 39 countries being represented in the OCRE tender. 
• The OCRE IaaS+ Tender was published in the Official Journal of the EU on 16 April 2020. Deadline to submit was 23 June 2020, 11:00 CEST
• A webinar targetting potential bidders for the OCRE IaaS+ Tender was held on 27 April 2020, 13:00 CEST
• The OCRE Tender for digital Earth Observation services will be published following the conclusion of the OCRE IaaS+ Tender.

See the OCRE IaaS+ Tender Document now!