GÉANT Above-the-Net Services Incubator

The GÉANT Above-the-Net Services Incubator is a programme aimed at supporting the development of innovative digital services by and for the European Research and Education community. Operating under the umbrella of the GÉANT project Above-the-Net Services Work Package, the initiative is designed to reduce the risks associated with developing new services before committing to full-scale project or service investment.

Through the Incubator, GÉANT supports GÉANT projects partners in developing Proofs of Concept (PoCs) for digital services addressing emerging needs in the Research and Education community. The programme encourages cross-NREN collaboration and co-creation, open source development, and sustainable approaches to pan-European service innovation.

Currently, the Incubator is focusing on the three strategic areas for service concept investment, as identified by the GÉANT Community Strategy for Above-the-Net Services and developed by the GÉANT project Above-the-Net Services team:

Digital Research Environment (DRE)

Supporting interoperable, multi-tenant digital research environments that enable researchers to access services, build secure virtual research workspaces, and collaborate across teams and institutions in different countries.

Object-Storage Infrastructure

Advancing the development of sovereign, distributed, and scalable pan-European storage infrastructure that supports FAIR data principles, interoperability, and research data management.

Data Movement Infrastructure

The 2025 edition of the GÉANT Above-the-Net Services Incubator awarded four initiatives led by consortia formed across GÉANT project partners. The four awarded initiatives will advance through development sprints, with larger projects expected to run until the end of 2026.

PanES3 – GÉANT DRE Storage Management in a pan-European context

Organisations: SUNET, SURF   |   Areas: Object Storage; DRE

Today, managing storage for research projects is essential for nearly all research, but scaling lifecycle management across projects at a pan-European level requires integration not yet achieved. PanES3 aims to tackle this, by integrating the ever-growing portfolio of pan-European S3 research storage solutions into the Proof of Concept (PoC) implementation of the GÉANT Digital Research Environment (DRE).

Based on the SURF Research Cloud, the PoC of the GÉANT DRE is showing that it is possible to provision virtual machines in environments controlled by other NRENs, requiring only a limited amount of changes to the existing codebase. The PanES3 project aims to take the next step, by extending the DRE’s functionalities and enabling it to provision and manage storage entities (S3 buckets), which can then be managed throughout their lifecycle and hosted in policy-compliant environments.

PanES3 will leverage the knowledge and expertise of SURF and SUNET, aiming to generalise the project results and apply them to other NRENs and infrastructure providers.

Additionally, the project foresees technical support and in-kind contributions from providers Safespring and Nextcloud, and collaboration with CESNET.

Sovereign Architecture for Geo-distributed European Object Storage

Organisations: CSC, DeiC, PCSS, SURF   |   Area: Object Storage

The project aims to explore and demonstrate the key aspects and the technical feasibility of the collective deployment of a sovereign object storage infrastructure at a pan-European scale, led by NRENs.

The proposed workplan builds upon and extends the scope of the Above-the-Net service concept development task within the GÉANT (GN5-2) project, by introducing a hands-on evaluation of both the underlying technology of choice and the potential organisational and operational models for developing and managing a cross-country, shared, federated data platform.

Participating NRENs will then prepare a detailed analysis and set of conclusions drawn from the technical and operational finding, which will serve as direct input to the ongoing service concept development work within the GN5-2 project.

MUSICA-DDM – Distributed Data Management using Rucio and FTS

Organisations: ACOnet, TU Wien/ASC   |   Area: Data Movement  

This project aims to implement a scalable, automated data management and transfer system for MUSICA, Austria’s new distributed HPC infrastructure spanning Vienna, Linz, and Innsbruck. MUSICA-DDM addresses the key challenge of synchronising large datasets in distributed HPC environments and contributes a model for the broader GÉANT community.

Using the European-developed technologies Rucio and FTS (File Transfer Service), the project will not only enable policy-based data replication and high-throughput transfers across MUSICA’s geographically separated sites, but also efficient data movement to and from external sites across the GÉANT network. This supports cross-border scientific projects requiring large-scale data sharing, it facilitates integration with European research infrastructures and data commons, and it aligns with European efforts to build a federated EOSC.

SAGE4EU – Implementation of SAGE (Scalable Amplified Group Environment) into the GÉANT Network

Organisations: CESNET   |   Area: DRE

Effective research collaboration across multiple locations and countries requires suitable digital tools and shared environments that enable researchers to have both a global overview of their work and the ability to examine fine-grained details.

The Scalable Amplified Group Environment (SAGE), developed as open-source software by US universities, is designed to facilitate this kind of collaborative work. Originally intended for large-scale display walls, the latest iteration—SAGE3—extends usability across a range of devices, from immersive wall displays to desktop and laptop computers. This flexibility enables both shared lab-based collaboration and remote participation using researchers’ personal devices.

The SAGE4EU project plans to deploy at least one SAGE3 server within Europe, connect it via the GÉANT network, and integrate it with eduGAIN. Given the international nature of research teams, bringing SAGE3 into the GÉANT ecosystem and within a European context aims to offer an optimal framework for secure, high-performance collaboration.