In this week’s announcement of the winners of the public procurement tender for “Managed Services for the European Open Science Cloud Platform (EOSC)”, GÉANT has been named in two of the three Lots: Lot 1 – Core Federation Services for the EOSC EU Node, and Lot 2 – Exchange Infrastructure Services for the EOSC EU Node.
- In Lot 1, GÉANT will be leading the delivery of the EOSC Authentication and Authorisation Infrastructure (AAI), and is a subcontractor as part of the Open Science Agora Consortium, alongside Greek NREN GRNET, and Czech NREN CESNET.
- In Lot 2, won by Polish NREN PSNC, GÉANT will support the consortium by providing the underlying network and the AAI. Also supporting the consortium is NORDUnet – representing the Norwegian Agency for Shared Services in Education and Research (Sikt).
- GÉANT will be working closely with LOT 3, providing any support required for the proper AAI integration of their services.
GÉANT’s role in the delivery of the EOSC cannot be underestimated. GÉANT will be leading the delivery of the EOSC AAI in Lot 1, an initiative which includes several key components designed to enhance the EOSC’s federated AAI capabilities:
- EOSC Access Federation: GÉANT will be responsible for the registration, maintenance, and publication of trust anchors and associated metadata for all entities within the EOSC Federated AAI. This includes the provision of crucial horizontal functionalities such as the Federation Registry, Discovery Service, Federation Connector, Federation Metadata, and Step-Up Authentication.
- Identity Hub: GÉANT will be delivering the Identity Hub, a key feature aimed at providing user authentication and delivering consistent user information to services within the EOSC Federated AAI.
- EOSC Exchange Infrastructure Proxy: This component will facilitate the connection between the EOSC Exchange and the services from LOT 2 and 3, ensuring smooth interoperability and integration of services in the EOSC Federated AAI.
Furthermore, GÉANT is delighted to announce the collaboration with EGI and GRNET in this endeavour. They will be instrumental in delivering the Infrastructure Proxy for the EOSC Core Services and the X509v3 Token Translation Service (TTS). This development marks a significant step forward in our ongoing efforts to support and enhance the scientific and research capabilities within the EOSC community. We look forward to the positive impact these advancements will bring to our users and stakeholders.
As stated on the European Commission (EC) website, “The European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) procurement is to build and deploy a fully operational enabling infrastructure for EOSC – referred to as the EOSC EU Node – providing access to a rich portfolio of FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) data and professional quality interoperable services in all relevant domains from data handling to computing, processing, analysis and storing.”
At the recent EOSC Symposium, GÉANT and the NRENs published a paper detailing the community’s position on the establishment of EOSC Nodes to support research and education.
