Executive Summary

The 2021 roadmap is still fit for purpose. GN5-2 planning is expected in earnest after summer 2023 and the WP4 strategy Task is to prepare timely input to an updated Roadmap 2023. The Tender for new cloud framework aimed to publish early in 2024 with significant stakeholder outreach and requirements gathering leading up to that. New framework contracts aimed to be ready and rolling out Q4 2024.

Key Discussion Points

A. Cloud upsides

  • users benefit from providers’ resources to access advances and offload effort
  • Functionality (and rate of innovation)
  • Scalability
  • Time to readiness
  • Software integration
  • Infrastructure procurement and management
  • IT-security
  • Energy efficiency

B. Cloud risks

  • Works best within a more holistic digital transformation in the organisation
  • Need to rethink roles, responsibilities, infrastructure strategy, supplier strategy, IT-security, data protection, procurement, CAPEX/OPEX
  • Lots about “digital sovereignty”; still taking shape, includes aspects of:
    • Retaining free and comprehensive access to your data processing
    • Preventing malicious access to your data by third parties
    • Maintaining data within a sufficiently trustworthy legal space
    • Resiliency to dramatic changes in the world (political, war, natural, “Snowden”)

C. Usefulness of work so far:

  • Collective procurement is one huge central value-add that the NRENS/GÉANT can organise
  • Not just for public cloud, happens to be applied to that in this case
  • Must work for non-EU NRENS also, however
  • Pan European joint procurement for Cloud has been seen as very effective, helpful and useful for
    both research and education.
  • Quote from uni:
    • “the IaaS is a little piece but for us is a huge step not only for cost saving but also workhours
      that we save and we don’t deal with procurement; it’s a great benefit to use it at country
      level and GEANT level”
  • Usage of clouds (infrastructure and beyond) is growing everywhere
  • Energy crisis increases need for energy-efficient services
  • Series of uni hacks highlights need for step-up in IT-security
  • Cloud services allow much faster reaction to changing conditions
  • Total GÉANT Framework consumption since 2017 ~140 million €
  • Current estimate: greater than 10 million € EU taxpayer money saved

D. Room for improvement GÉANT

  • More collective and systematic engagement with EOSC
  • Improve practical reliability of the reporting and cost-recovery mechanism of Framework
  • Build on collecting and disseminating community expertise (data classification, GDPR risk, procurement tools, central consultancy(?) )
  • Strengthen the skills-building relevant to the cloud services
  • Look at SaaS cloud services, future main interest for edu and admin communities

E. Community services sharing

  • GN4-3 WP4 investigated this (Dan Still, CSC)
    • Technical federation of services and workloads is relatively easy (Open Infrastructure)
    • Cross border service/support and business models with cost recovery is challenging for NRENs that serve their national community
    • VAT for the resource exchange
    • Funding portal infrastructure for long term service provisioning with the associated running and administrative costs is challenging

F. Skills development:

  • Growing realisation of need for skills development around clouds
  • Deficit in understanding/skills at unis around clouds regarding:
    • Strategic in-/out-sourcing principles
    • Implementation of advanced research and education applications
    • Architecture for various (hybrid) use cases
    • Compliance management (DP, procurement)
    • Central management and controlling of cloud usage
  • NRENs can develop role of cloud competence centre for national community
  • Facilitate learning content and formats for different stakeholder groups at unis
  • Maybe do more to procure vendor-neutral basic training resources for starters
  • For that, NRENs must better understand entire unis’ needs, not just IT-depts’ wants

G. NREN role in cloud service delivery

  • Cloud Framework delivery is a comms challenge too:
    • High interest in clouds at unis by end-users (research, teaching, admin)
    • NRENs’ contacts at Unis are primarily central IT / low-level network folks, low interest in clouds in that community
    • Low level of interaction on cloud demand/requirements with local end-users
    • Fundamentally: a disconnect between NREN traditional uni stakeholders and the optimal target audience of public cloud services
    • That leaves the opportunity of procured GÉANT Cloud Frameworks under-exploited

H. Education-specific topics

  • Research is more skilled than education on cloud.
  • Pan-European joint procurement for Cloud is effective, helpful and useful for both research and education
  • IaaS helps with cost and resource saving for HEIs both at country level and GEANT level.
  • There is a need for a broader consultation between HEIs and NRENs to investigate what are the key needs and what can NRENs offer.
  • HEIs lack skills, access to services and learning about the services, these should go together.
  • GEANT support HEIs through NRENs with collaboration, framework and knowledge sharing


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