The autumn meeting of SIG-MSP (Special Interest Group on Management of Service Portfolios) took place in the historic city of Prague on 23 October 2025, kindly hosted by the Czech NREN CESNET. With the theme “Service Evolution vs Revolution”, the meeting brought together service portfolio managers, strategy leads and innovation thinkers from NRENs across Europe and beyond to explore how national research & education networks are adapting and re-orienting their service offerings in a changing landscape.
In total, the event brought together over 50 participants, with 24 attending in person and around 30 connecting online. Remote participants included representatives from RNP (Brazil), BdREN (Bangladesh), and SANReN (South Africa), highlighting the truly global reach of the SIG-MSP community.
The meeting kicked off with welcome remarks from CESNET CEO Jakub Papírník, followed by an overview of CESNET’s service portfolio journey by Radovan Igliar. A sequence of lightning talks then addressed service evolution:
- Kevin Chavarria (Switch) presented “When to Pivot: Lessons from Legacy Services to a New Cloud for Research & Education”, highlighting their cloud platform which aims to provide economically priced services but which can scale with big projects and future roadmaps.
- Michel Wets (SURF) outlined how SURF evolves its cloud-service delivery model to stay ahead of demand.
- Robert Hackett (HEAnet) shared “ISO 27001: The journey so far” – a useful dive into service assurance and certification.
- Jakob Tendel (DFN) discussed “Flexibility in DFN service delivery”, showcasing DFN’s service portfolio and service provision activities.
- Kasandra Pillay (CSIR) presented SANReN’s Connect proof-of-concept service, a new VPN-based solution designed to provide South African students with zero-cost internet access.
The service revolution bit followed with the following talks:
- Harri Kuusisto (CSC/Funet) addressed how service providers are shutting down on-premise solutions and preferring Cloud based solutions.
- Raimundas Tuminauskas (PCSS) presented the new services and innovative technologies PCSS is working on.
- Clare Casey (Jisc) explored how Jisc is using AI to support net zero targets.
- Alejandro Lara (REUNA) discussed the implications of Chilean cybersecurity framework law for Research and Education institutions.
The morning concluded with a roundtable where each attending NREN shared its perspective on where their service portfolio stands now, and where it could be headed given challenges such as sovereignty, geopolitics, climate-change and the evolving landscape.
In the afternoon, a feedback session on GÉANT’s new strategy was facilitated by Dawn Ng (GÉANT). Participants broke into groups addressing the focus areas of new services and emerging tech for the future service delivery and development sub-strategy. The feedback gathered during this session proved extremely valuable, reaffirming that the GÉANT community is indispensable in shaping future directions and should continue to be actively involved in building and refining the service strategy.
A final interactive “sovereignty services” session took place – an exchange on how to make GÉANT services more sovereign, which services should be next and what next steps are required. Great energy and open ideas flowed from the SIG-MSP group.
The day closed with wrap-up and announcement of the next meeting dates for 2026. Overall, the meeting clearly emphasised the following takeaways:
· Dual mindset: NRENs must juggle evolution (incremental improvement of existing services) and revolution (disruptive change) in parallel – organisations cannot afford to stand still.
· Sovereignty matters: Across sessions, the notion of service sovereignty — whether in cloud, procurement, security, regulation underpinned many discussions. NRENs are increasingly asking: “Can we control more of the stack? How can services be governed, sourced, delivered in a way aligning with institutional and national values?”
· AI & responsible transformation: Several talks explored how AI is both a catalyst for change (e.g. cloud + AI) and a domain requiring caution (ethical, climate impact).
A big thank you to all the attendees and presenters, and the utmost gratitude to CESNET for being a fantastic host who made this meeting possible.
