A new Horizon Europe project, EOSC4ALL, has launched with a clear ambition: to make it easier for eligible organisations to establish and operate EOSC Nodes, share services and data across the Federation, and build solutions that can be reused and sustained beyond the project.
Coordinated by GÉANT, EOSC4ALL brings together 19 organisations from 11 countries, combining expertise in research infrastructures, federated identity, cloud and data services, interoperability, Open Science, training and sustainability.
The project’s kick-off meeting, took place in Amsterdam from 30 September to 2 October, marking the beginning of a collaboration with the consortium partners focused on making it easy to join the EOSC Federation by offering reusable solutions for organisations that want to participate.
The EOSC Federation is built around independently managed Nodes that work together to provide access to research services, data and resources. EOSC4ALL will help lower the technical and operational barriers to establishing these Nodes, while developing capabilities that enable them to work together across organisational and national boundaries.
“EOSC4ALL brings together organisations with extensive experience across research infrastructures, federated identity, data, cloud services and Open Science. Our shared ambition is to turn that expertise into practical solutions that make participation in the EOSC Federation easier and more sustainable. The kick-off is an important moment for the consortium to come together, establish how we will work as one team and start turning the project’s vision into action.”
Vasiliki Georgiadou, EOSC4ALL Project Manager, GÉANT
Making EOSC easier to join
At the heart of EOSC4ALL is the GÉANT Digital Research Environment (GDRE), a managed, multi-tenant platform designed to provide the core capabilities organisations need to establish and operate an EOSC Node in line with the EOSC Node Reference Architecture.
Rather than requiring every organisation to develop and maintain the same underlying capabilities independently, the GDRE provides a common foundation on which Nodes can be established. It will include capabilities for authentication and authorisation, service catalogues and graphs, monitoring, accounting, service management and other Node requirements.
EOSC4ALL will use the GDRE to deploy production-ready EOSC Nodes among which, GÉANT (second wave – sequence one), DeiC and Asiera (both at EOSC Gravity Preparatory grant phase), Pro-M and CyNet (under consideration). These deployments will provide real-world environments in which the project’s technical, organisational and operational approaches can be tested and demonstrated.
Connecting Nodes, services and data
Beyond the development of eosc-ready nodes, EOSC4ALL will also develop, strengthen and offer Federating Capabilities as a service. These capabilities enable Nodes to meet the requirements for participation in the EOSC Federation.
One of these Federating Capabilities offered as a service is the EOSC Authentication and Authorisation Infrastructure (AAI), which is one of the mandatory federated capabilities. The EOSC AAI follows the EOSC AAI Architecture and enables federated authentication and authorisation across the Nodes of the EOSC Federation. The EOSC File Synch and Share (EFSS) federating capability will be enhanced to support secure data sharing and enable collaboration across Nodes.
The EFSS work builds on the Open Cloud Mesh protocol and is intended to support both services deployed through the GDRE and existing services elsewhere in the EOSC ecosystem. The project will also make the managed AAI capability available to organisations establishing EOSC Nodes outside the GDRE.
Together, these capabilities will contribute to a more interoperable EOSC environment in which services, resources and research outputs can work across institutional and national boundaries.
Building for scale and sustainability
The initial Nodes will provide practical experience of what it takes to deploy and operate EOSC Nodes in real environments. EOSC4ALL will use that experience to develop approaches that can be reused beyond the initial deployments.
This includes technical documentation, training, onboarding approaches, exploitation models, sustainability plans and service delivery models. The project will also develop training, including train-the-trainer approaches, to support organisations deploying Nodes through the GDRE.
The ambition is therefore not simply to demonstrate that the approach works, but to turn what is learned into reusable capabilities and models that can support the wider EOSC community.
To anticipate the evolution of the federation landscape, EOSC4ALL will research and pilot OpenID Federation as a next-generation federation protocol for future full-mesh topologies, and will investigate the integration of the European Digital Identity (EUDI) Wallet to support emerging European digital identity frameworks.
Part of a wider EOSC ecosystem
EOSC4ALL contributes capabilities, experience and practical evidence to the wider EOSC ecosystem. The project will work with the EOSC Federation Build-up Group and establish links with related EOSC projects and initiatives to support technical and strategic alignment.
This collaborative approach was reinforced on 15 October 2026 at the EOSC Symposium in Florence, when EOSC4ALL joined EOSC-CONNECT, EOSC-Marine, EOSC Mesh and the EOSC Association in signing a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to strengthen collaboration and advance the development of the EOSC Federation.
The agreement provides a framework for aligning technical developments, sharing expertise and identifying joint priorities across these projects. By coordinating their complementary efforts, the signatories aim to reduce fragmentation and duplication, strengthen interoperability and support the long-term sustainability of the Federation.
For EOSC4ALL, this collaboration provides an opportunity to connect its work on making EOSC Nodes easier to establish and operate with the wider effort to develop a coherent, interoperable Federation that serves Europe’s research communities.
EOSC4ALL’s central goal is simple: lower the barrier to participation, connect Nodes and capabilities, and build for a Federation that can grow.
More information
GÉANT Node enters production in the EOSC Federation as GÉANT strengthens collaboration through MoU
