TENDER SIGNUP FOR INSTITUTIONS AND BUYER GROUPS IS NOW CLOSED.

The OCRE Tender Signup Process

Institutions have already signed up in procuring IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS solutions and EO data services via the OCRE Tender

European research and education organisations have been invited to participate in the Open Clouds for Research Environments (OCRE) tender. The OCRE tender targets two different service types:

Who applied

Individual institutions or Buyer groups in the EU and EEA have been invited to apply from the following:

• Higher education
• Research
• Primary and secondary education, libraries and academic hospitals

Application has now been closed.

Benefits

For organisations that have met the deadline for signing up, they can benefit from the following:

1. You can use the results of the tender: ready-to-use service agreements with cloud and Earth Observation providers, which ensure good conditions of use around data privacy, contracting, billing, support, technical integration and have special pricing. You can use these contracts to consume the selected suppliers' service offerings; to buy resources with your own funds.

2. You are eligible to request cloud adoption funds. The European Commission has provided OCRE with €9.5 million in adoption funds, to stimulate the usage of cloud and Earth Observation services, throughout the project’s 2019 - 2021 timeframe. OCRE will make these funds available in different stages.

OCRE will distribute a first batch of adoption funds, across institutions and buyer groups who have signed up for the OCRE tender and have indicated their interest before the past deadline.

For buyer groups: €2,25 million for usage of cloud resources is available for buyer groups who collectively sign-up for the OCRE tender and commit to consuming cloud services via OCRE in 2020.

For individual institutions: OCRE will distribute a minimum amount of €150,000 across individual institutions, through vouchers. These vouchers can be used for running research related IaaS workloads at pre-selected suppliers from an already available set of agreements; those in the GÉANT IaaS framework. 

Based on the expressed interest, OCRE will create categories of research domains and / or countries and group applicants accordingly. OCRE will ensure a balanced distribution of the vouchers across these categories and when needed will select winners randomly for each of these categories.

Besides these aforementioned funds which are tied to the OCRE tender sign up, OCRE partners with the following organisations on adoption: 

• Eurodoc (The European Council for Doctoral Candidates and Junior Researchers)
• Marie Curie Association (a global network of researchers)
• EOSC-hub project

These three organisations will make available €200,000 in vouchers to individual researchers and will handle the selection of and distribution to the researchers.

Timeline

Note that there will be two separate OCRE tenders, one for commodity cloud services and another on digital Earth Observation services. Tender publication has been delayed. Timelines and deadlines for both maybe updated in the future. Watch this space to keep up to date.

How to participate

Research and higher education institutions in the following 39 countries are already registered in the tender via their National Research and Education Network (NREN). Your NREN is collaborating closely with the OCRE project, via the European GÉANT association.

Cloud contact points at the NRENs are available on this separate webpage.

Other information on the NRENs are available here.

Take advantage of volume benefits: Provide input on your expected consumption

In addition to this basic registration, you are invited to provide input to OCRE on your expected consumption via the tender.

In the tender documentation, the NRENs and OCRE will present a collective view of the expected consumption which will take place through the OCRE tender. Gathering this demand across institutions, into a collective consumption projection, is expected to result in more favourable conditions of use from providers: the larger the volume, the higher the discount levels. All institutions who provide information on their expected usage as part of the tender documentation, will benefit from volume benefits achieved through the OCRE tender.

The NRENs, GÉANT and OCRE are collaborating, to gather this information in a coordinated manner. 

Primary and secondary education, libraries and academic hospitals

For organisations in primary and secondary education, libraries and academic hospitals. In a number of countries your NREN delivers services to you. If your NREN fulfils a coordinating role in the OCRE tender and adds your organisation to the tender list, you will be eligible to consume the outcomes. Please contact your NREN for further details. Cloud contact points at the NRENs are available on this separate webpage.

For organisations interested in coordinating a tender buyer group

Please note that tender signups have now concluded. Nonetheless, for more information, contact OCRE.