Last year, GÉANT conducted a pan-European public tender for Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS): a collective call for vendors to submit offers for the delivery of their IaaS solutions. The Croatian Academic and Research Network – CARNet played a leading role in this process.
The aim of this public tender, which covers 36 countries, is to enable research and educational institutions to use cloud computing in a secure, simple, and predictable manner, with services that are:
- in accordance with European and national regulations;
- attractive prices;
- related to community networks and their identity management capabilities;
- available for controlled and transparent purchase.
Aggregating demand from European national academic and research networks (Eng.). National Research and Education Networks, NRENs) and the 10,000 institutions they connect, GÉANT has created a significant single digital market into which up to €500 million could be channeled through framework agreements over the next four years. Furthermore, the service portfolio and associated access, which includes unified delivery and rollout of cloud services, ensures a stable foundation for the achievement of the EU's European Cloud and European Open Science Cloud initiatives.
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GÉANT has applied the EU Procurement Directive (2014/24/EU), which allows for cross-border procurement through a central purchasing body. This EU Directive ensures that institutions can easily use IaaS solutions from GÉANT's cloud computing IaaS service catalog, either through direct award or mini-competition. Through GÉANT's cloud computing service catalog, suppliers provide procurement models that match the financial structures and funding models in research and education: purchasing services via a purchase order, postpaid Collection of usage and adjustment of capital expenditures through contractual obligations related to service usage. What follows? Since the tender process has now been concluded, contracts are being concluded with all providers, after which services will become available to institutions via the NRENs. |
CARNet and GÉANT Cloud Computing Since the very beginning of cloud computing activities within the GÉANT project (GÉANT 3plus from 2013), the Croatian Academic and Research Network – CARNet has played a leading role in this process. Thus, during the preparation of the first pan-European public procurement ever, CARNet experts Branko Radojević (Assistant Director for Computing Infrastructure and Services) as head of the tender preparation team, Saša Čavara (Head of the Internet Services Department) as an expert in technical aspects of the tender, and Josip Marohnić (lawyer) as an expert in legal aspects of the tender, participated alongside colleagues from all over Europe. CARNet's team continues its work on preparing new benefits for all GÉANT users from the educational, academic, and research systems at the EU level, including users from Croatia. |
With strong public procurement interest, over 100 companies applied for the tender. The following providers have qualified and will become part of GÉANT's Cloud Computing Service Catalog IaaS portfolio upon conclusion of contractual agreements: Amazon (via resellers: Arcus, Comparex, Telecom Italia), Cloudsigma, Dimension Data, Interoute, itSoft, KPN, Lattelecom, Microsoft (via resellers: Atea, Cacttus, Comparex, Dom-Daniel, Infosoft, Micromail, Nextsense, Novabase, SoftwareOne, Span and Ymens), NTT Europe, T-Systems, Telecom Italia, and Vancis.
Public procurement also ensures that suppliers consider the combined expenditure of all institutions and offer the same discounts to all clients, based on the aggregated consumption of the entire research and education population.
News related to this topic can be followed via the GÉANT cloud computing website or by contacting the cloud computing team at clouds@geant.org.