News
Tender for pan-European cloud services procurement published: OCRE 2024
Renewed cloud services offering
Since 2016, research and education institutions can legitimately and cost-effectively procure and use public cloud services without their own tendering. SURF, together with the other NRENs and GÉANT, bridges the gap between research and education institutions and cloud service providers. With the OCRE 2024 tender, we are now renewing our SURFcumulus offer for the second time. Like the OCRE 2020 tender, it focuses on a diverse portfolio of public cloud services.
SURFcumulus as standard provisioning model for cloud services
SURFcumulus has become the standard provisioning model within our network: currently, the majority of SURF members use this service. Also with the new OCRE 2024 tender, institutions save time and effort on individual purchases, minimise incoming and outgoing costs, and have access to discounts and exit support, among other things. Thanks to our partnership with SIVON, primary and secondary schools will also have access to cloud services from 2025.
SURF is involved in drafting the tender documents and also co-evaluates the bids. The OCRE 2020 tender had 1,000 bids and both US and a good number of European cloud providers.
We expect for OCRE 2024:
- Both Dutch, European and US cloud providers available.
- The number of tenders for the 39 countries increases to 2000-3000.
- A total value of more than 1 billion euro for use over the 5-year contract period.