Tag - OCRE

Partner Webinar: Oracle Database to Cloud – 16 May 2023, 11:00 BST

Join Quistor for an exclusive webinar on Tuesday 16 May, 11:00-12:00 BST. Quistor experts will showcase the features of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure’s (OCI) native database platforms, specifically tailored for research and education institutions. The speakers will delve into Quistor’s expertise in database performance tuning and monitoring, as well as demonstrate how Quistor can help you successfully lift and shift your applications and databases to OCI. Discover the OCI Database Service for Azure, and how the Azure/OCI interconnect can provide compatibility with your existing cloud infrastructure. Furthermore, they will discuss the benefits of the OCI Autonomous Database and Exadata, and how this can help you increase database...

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OCRE celebrates successful final review and project’s legacy

Following a successful final review by the European Commission, the OCRE project team celebrates the culmination of their work, together with the project’s conclusion and its remarkable achievements. In its role of OCRE’s coordinator, GÉANT extends its heartfelt appreciation to partner organisations CERN, RHEA and Trust-IT, as well as to contractors EARSC, Evenflow and SixSq for their contributions and for their dedication to the project’s success. Our thanks also to the community of European NRENs for their crucial role in support of the project, and to commercial partners for their proactive approach. Unlocking the potential of cloud and EO services for European research Concluded in December 2022, the OCRE (Open Clouds for Research...

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The Impact of OCRE

The OCRE project, which came to a close in December 2022, made commercial cloud services available to accelerate research and education throughout 10,000 institutions across Europe Driving innovation through research and driving research through innovation The OCRE project was initiated to stimulate the use of commercial cloud and Earth Observation (EO) services by the European research community. According to Dave Heyns, OCRE Project Director, the adoption of such services was particularly low before the project commenced because researchers and research institutions struggled to find the proper service providers and reach legal and technical agreements with them. “What we did was to aggregate community demand and requirements and applied...

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6th Barcelona Techno Week: Scientific Computing in the Cloud | 29 May – 2 June 2023, Barcelona and online

The Institute of Cosmos Sciences of the University of Barcelona (ICCUB) announces the 6th edition of its Techno Week workshop. The workshop is dedicated to the use of Cloud for scientific computing, and will be held at the premises of the ICCUB in Barcelona from 29 May to 2 June 2023. The Techno Week will be a hybrid event, with 40 seats for on-site participation and 100 seats for remote participation. It will include presentations on several cloud use cases from different disciplines and talks on cloud technology, tools, and initiatives, including a presentation on the OCRE project by GÉANT‘s Procurement Specialist Monique Pellinkhof. Additionally, on-site participation to the Techno Week will include three hands-on workshops with...

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OCRE Policy Brief: OCRE’s experience through researchers’ eyes

Recommendations on how to improve access to cloud and EO services for the scientific community in Europe Since  its  launch  in  January  2019,  the  EU-funded  Open  Clouds  for  Research  Environments  (OCRE) project has greatly improved ease of access to cloud services and EO data for researchers through several tendering processes. OCRE has played a strong supporting role in the development of cloud computing and innovation in Europe by providing European public institutions with an online catalogue of commodity-type commercial digital services. Via the catalogue the project granted access to a vast choice of cloud and EO data suppliers, many of whom were not previously available, and provided volume discounts to both research and...

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OCRE Success Story: Decentralized Machine Learning Control of Drone Swarms

Thanks to commercial cloud resources procured via OCRE project adoption funding, researchers at Univerzitet Singidunum in Serbia (in collaboration with Univesidade Lusófona, Portugal) are developing algorithmic solutions for autonomous swarms of drones, enabling them to safely perform complex tasks in unknown environments using on-board sensors and inter-drone communication. The possible applications of this technology are many, including prevention and assistance with natural disasters, inspection and maintenance of industrial infrastructure, assistance with search and rescue operations. OCRE Cloud Adoption Funding for Research allowed the project to access to the specialized computing resources required to perform complex and...

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OCRE Success Story: Leiden University – Pushing the frontiers in housing market research

A new success story showcasing the adoption and use of commercial cloud solutions has been published by the OCRE project. The adopter is Leiden University who was facing critical computational challenges in analysing terabytes of housing platform data to better understand search behaviour of potential house buyers. The computational challenges and storage issues have been overcome by using the Google Cloud Platform and more precisely cloud services related to storage and advanced analytics; that is, Google Cloud Storage (IaaS) and Google BigQuery (SaaS). These solutions have saved Leiden University from having to set up its own IT infrastructure and made it possible to do a complex big data project with modest means. This case demonstrates...

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OCRE Awards Cloud Adoption Funding to 15 Exciting Research Projects

Fifteen innovative research projects will benefit from commercial cloud solutions through EU cloud project Open Clouds for Research Environments (OCRE), demonstrating the adoption and effectiveness of commercial cloud services in research.  Approximately €6 million will be distributed to the successful applicants, each receiving between €100,000 and €500,000. This is the second and final call run by the OCRE project for the adoption of the cloud services available through the OCRE IaaS+ framework agreements. It proves a new funding mechanism with commercial cloud providers teaming up directly with researchers to apply. All applications were screened, evaluated,  scored and ranked by the OCRE cloud adoption funding team and overseen by the...

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OCRE Mini-competition and Funding Call well received

The OCRE Cloud and Earth Observation (EO) adoption for research open calls which closed the 12th and 15th of July 2022 saw a high participation. The proposals received have assured the OCRE Team of compelling use cases to demonstrate the effectiveness of commercial Cloud and Earth Observation (EO) services in producing better research outcomes. And the high quantity of proposals and large amount of interest has demonstrated the effectiveness of the new funding mechanism used in the Cloud call. In total the two calls will see the remaining EC funding distributed directly to the researchers who need it in the form of vouchers. In the case of the Cloud call, an accelerated adoption model was used, whereby the commercial suppliers engaged...

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New OCRE Funding and Procurement Call

The EC-funded OCRE project is awarding  approximately €500,000 per project to fund cloud infrastructure, platform and software services that drive agility and accelerate outcomes for qualifying research projects. This includes both Cloud and Earth Observation services. We encourage you to engage with researchers in your institutions to take advantage of this funding and share this information with their colleagues, students and networks. As coordinators for the OCRE Frameworks in each country, NRENs can play a vital role in supporting research projects with this funding call. Please use national channels to raise awareness of this opportunity among research communities, and work to facilitate the necessary partnerships (e.g. project...

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