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Funding opportunities & Commercial services

A total of € 4.8 million has been allotted to bring ready-to-use, state-of-the-art commercial services to EOSC users. The adoption funding is spread across 3 calls, each on a different theme, in order to:

  • boost supplier engagement
  • build on experience gained through the GÉANT-led OCRE project
  • offer guidance on governance and compliance
  • ensure funding reaches across different domains and scientific communities.

    Want to apply for the latest call – #3: Digital aggregators – Deadline: 14 July, 12.00 CEST?

    Read more about the latest procurement call in the list below…

NEW CALL: Digital aggregators

A second call for European research e-infrastructures – Distribution of commercial cloud services

Does your organisation, network or entity work with, support or provide digital services to the European R&E community in the EU ? Do you have a concept for driving commercial services uptake among researchers in your region and Europe?

Based on the great success of the first such EOSC Future call, we are initiating a new similar call for proposals for ‘digital aggregators’ to drive the uptake of digital services within the broader European research community!

 

SAME TARGET, NEW CALL

The call is part of a €4.8M adoption funding programme supported by the EU, through the EOSC Future project (this next call aims to distribute €1.4M). It is the second call targeting digital aggregators (e.g. non-profit entities, NRENs, RIs and e-Infrastructures, HPC centres, etc.) who will collaborate with local OCRE cloud service providers  on dynamic and creative proposals.

These proposals should demonstrate a concrete approach to distributing state-of-the-art digital services (e.g. compute, storage, machine learning, analytics, AI) via the European Open Science Cloud. We anticipate that these mechanisms could potentially drive strategy and relevance for many of the research infrastructures moving forward.

Two proposals will be awarded up to €600,000 (VAT excluded) in pre-procured IaaS/PaaS/SaaS (including professional services) from OCRE cloud providers (find the list of OCRE services in the EOSC Marketplace).

Previous winners demonstrate –

  1. Open Source Trusted Resarch Environments (TRE)
  2. Elastic Kubernetes clusters deployed on multi-Clouds
  3. Flexible Authentication & Authorization Infrastructure-as-a-Service (including HPC)
  4. Cloud native Kubernetes environment working with models which classify hate speech (using GPUs for machine learning)
  5. OpenScienceLabs supporting simulations of HPC workflow

 

WHAT MAKES A STRONG PROPOSAL?

We encourage the submission of proposals that demonstrate pan-European service provision where possible.

Proposals must be able to showcase sustainable distribution mechanisms or methods for making commercial services available to researchers. Strong proposals will clearly lay out how an EOSC user could:

  • consume these services for their research project(s)
  • apply for support to take advantage of these services.

Proposals should also consider how these services may be integrated into EOSC in terms of:

  • AAI and the Research and Education federations
  • supplier service registration
  • any other integration opportunities with the EOSC Interoperability Framework.

Important note: Individuals or organisations who have already been awarded funding through the EOSC Future procurement scheme mini-competitions cannot apply for this round.

 

GET MATCHED UP WITH A COMMERCIAL CLOUD PROVIDER!

If you want to apply for this call, you need to get matched with a commercial cloud service provider in your region (specifically, from the list of OCRE framework contract holders). Please use the catalogue to identify and contact the appropriate  OCRE cloud supplier near you, and then collaborate on a proposal. All OCRE suppliers in EU countries will have been invited to participate and will be responsible for the submission of the proposal for scoring.

The deadline for applucations is Friday 14 July 2023, 12.00 CEST.

If you have any other questions, please email info@eoscfuture.eu

5 grants, each of up to €400 000, have been awarded to projects to adapt a concrete approach to distributing state-of-the-art digital services available in the EOSC Marketplace.

Find out more about the selected projects and their solutions for driving the uptake of cloud services…

After the careful review of 9 compelling proposals, the following 5 proposals have been selected. Here are their profiles, and the solutions they will bring to EOSC users across all research domains:

1. OpenScienceLabs for HPC (Austria), from Sparkle and the Vienna Scientific Cluster

The HPC Development-OpenScienceLab is an online tool that senior researchers can use to simulate and create a HPC (high-performance computing) workflow, a feat usually out of their reach, due to limited computing power and resources. It is easy to use and includes sample data. Researchers can also use the tool to create HPC Analysis-OpenScienceLabs, which can be used to review scientific papers interactively, with real data and the researcher’s own analysis tools. Every OpenScienceLab runs on a specific Google Project that is the smallest logical “container” of cloud resources for Google.  The proposed solution offers a user-friendly and secure environment for researchers to carry out HPC workflows and share their scientific findings in a transparent and reproducible manner.

2. Hate Classifier service (UK), by Quistor and the University of Sussex Applied Language Modelling Facility

This tool helps researchers who are working to analyse and classify hate speech – a difficult field to study because of the lack of clear definition of what hate speech is, creating unique challenges and specific needs for researchers. Hosted in a cloud-based environment and using high-performance OCI Nvidia GPUs for machine learning, the Hate Classifier service can be used by researchers to develop and train new models that could change the way we understand hate speech, setting a new standard for the use of machine learning.

3. European Environment for Scientific Software Installation (Netherlands), by Bechtle, Quistor as subcontractor and SURF

Based on the principle of infrastructure-as-code, this installation will help researchers to easily install and use scientific software by providing easy-to-read scripts that can generate the necessary research environment. These scripts can be updated over time and researchers can use different types of scripts to distribute their software more easily. Using this tool will make it easier for researchers to access public cloud infrastructure options while maintaining security through the SURF Research Access Management system.

4. INCD Cloud services (Portugal), from Sparkle and the Portuguese National Distributed Computing Infrastructure

This platform provides a single entry point for researchers to easily deploy and manage computationally demanding applications by allowing users to containerise workloads and create computing clusters that work across multiple clouds. GCP’s EC3 facilitates the multi-cloud deployments providing integration between the Google platform and the INCD infrastructure.

5. GWDG TRE (Germany), by Rackspace and the Gesellschaft für wissenschaftliche Datenverarbeitung mbH Göttingen

TRE is a an open-source tool that helps research organisations create secure environments on the AWS Cloud for collaborating scientists from multiple research centres to perform their analysis, also providing a governance process to help researchers meet their compliance requirements across multiple jurisdictions. GWDG TRE aims to solve current issues that hinder the research community’s access to cloud-based agility, scalability, and cost efficiency by providing a common EOSC integrated infrastructure based on the Aggregator’s Landing Zone and the AWS TRE platform.

This call is closed. Stay tuned for updates on the results!

Procurement in action

Stay tuned for our ‘procurement use cases’ for more insights into the applications of digital commercial services for research communities across Europe.

The RDA/EOSC Future open call series provides opportunities for scientific communities to contribute to the development of research data tools, standards and expertise in the context of EOSC. The overarching objective is to bring data initiatives and experts closer to EOSC, while providing the platform with tools and standards from the global research data community to ensure long-term interoperability, accessibility and engagement via domain ambassadors.

With a total budget of € 1 million, over 30 grants have been awarded so far. Find out more about the grantees and their innovative and collaborative projects through the link below.

Visit the EOSC Future Grants Platform for more information on current RDA calls.

Meet the grantees here.

The EOSC Digital Innovation Hub (EOSC DIH), through EOSC Future, facilitates the co-development of solutions by the private sector, including start-ups and SMEs, addressing the real-life needs of research communities.

  • In 2022, EOSC DIH explored the needs and requirements of selected
    research communities and clusters.
  • During 2023, up to 3 solutions, developed by the private sector and with
    a maximum allocated budget of 180K EUR each, will be funded and
    co-developed with the EOSC DIH.

These solutions will be added to the EOSC Marketplace and become accessible for all researchers. The expected impact for EOSC, is to enhance the offering available on EOSC Marketplace with innovative commercial services, test the EOSC onboarding process for commercial providers, and validate the purchase mechanism that allows innovation and co-development into the EOSC.

EOSC DIH supports companies through Business Pilots

EOSC DIH boosts the innovation of SMEs and startups, thanks to the use of EOSC resources and services. The EOSC DIH Business Pilots allow SMEs and startups to engage with EOSC, not only as users but also as providers, experimenting with the development of new/enhanced products and services integrating EOSC resources and services.

More info

For more information on what EOSC Future is doing to boost the uptake of commercial services, visit our Key Exploitable Results page.