Recommendations on how to improve access to cloud and EO services for the scientific community in Europe
Since its launch in January 2019, the EU-funded Open Clouds for Research Environments (OCRE) project has greatly improved ease of access to cloud services and EO data for researchers through several tendering processes. OCRE has played a strong supporting role in the development of cloud computing and innovation in Europe by providing European public institutions with an online catalogue of commodity-type commercial digital services.
Via the catalogue the project granted access to a vast choice of cloud and EO data suppliers, many of whom were not previously available, and provided volume discounts to both research and education institutions. As a result, the European research community obtained access to powerful tools to carry out the computational work and boost innovation with greatly reduced legal, financial, and technical barriers.
In a new policy brief, the OCRE project has summarised several of the challenges faced by researchers when exploring cloud solutions for their work and the benefits of applying for commercial cloud solutions and approaching EO data providers through OCRE.
In particular, the winners of the OCRE funding calls have been interviewed to identify the needs of the research community for cloud and EO data and the related benefits, their experience with OCRE, the impact of facilitated access to cloud and EO data, and the remaining barriers at local and European level.
