OCRE - Open Clouds for Research Environments

OCRE (Open Clouds for Research Environments) provides funding for scientific and research institutions with the aim to foster cloud adoption, offering ready-made service contracts, which brings together cloud providers, Earth Observation (EO) organisations and the research and education community.

Researchers and scientists can now profit from cloud solutions using public cloud to run their projects on a remote, reliable and safe infrastructure that gives opportunity to easily access projects and dataset allowing to disseminate results in a simple way. 

The CloudFerro offer as part of the OCRE project

• CLOUD SERVICES - wide range of cloud computing services, open source based, available immediately on the CREODIAS platform, including: VMs, Dedicated Servers, GPU, Kubernetes, large data storage and sharing, with direct access to GÉANT network;
• ACCESS TO EO DATA - unlimited, immediate, local access to the largest satellite EO data repository in Europe, with over 30PB of data, at no additional cost, including the possibility of on-site data processing in the cloud;
• SUPPORT - premium technical support at no extra charge
  • help in getting started with cloud, problem solving,
  • access to large knowledge base, tutorials, FAQs,
  • online and on-demand webinars.

Benefits for our customers

• FLEXIBILITY - our customers receive specialized services customized to their needs and support in choosing the right resources for their projects, they get a wide spectrum of additional services and dedicated technical support;
• PREDICTABLE COSTS – our users can benefit from various financing options, 18,5% discount for science and efficient, flexible and competitive cost models, ensuring simple and predictable budgeting;
• DIGITAL AUTONOMY - we ensure no vendor lock-in - our cloud services are based on mature and flexible open source technologies OpenStack and Ceph, which are industry standards, our hardware is assembled within our company, we have all needed local competences to ensure stable, independent services - all this means that our customers receive solutions without becoming dependent on one supplier;
• EU COMPLIANCE - we are subjected to the EU law and norms, we are not subject to any regulation outside Europe, public services delivered to our customers, their data and processing are all hosted in data centers located in EU countries.

OCRE financing - ​Frequently Asked Questions

Who is eligible for OCRE fundings?

Researchers from over 10,000 organizations in the Research and Education sector in Europe, who want to implement their projects based on cloud solutions, are eligible to apply for OCRE funds.

What is the budget of the OCRE project?

OCRE has a total budget of EUR 9.5 million, including EUR 5 million for cloud computing services and EUR 4.5 million for EO services. Under OCRE, you can get financing for cloud services worth from 50,000 to 100,000 €.

What services does OCRE finance?

Thanks to OCRE, members of the scientific community can use free cloud computing services (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS) and services related to EO in scientific and research projects with qualified suppliers. In particular, the financing of OCRE includes cloud computing services offered on the CREODIAS platform and additionally specific services in the field of Earth Observation.

How to receive OCRE fundings?

Information on the open calls for proposals and detailed instructions how to apply can be found at OCRE website.

Watch webinar CREO4Science and learn how to receive cloud infrastructure funding within OCRE and NoR.

CloudFerro experience

We have extensive experience in cooperation with science. We cooperate with nearly 30 scientific institutions and research centers throughout Europe, such as the European Space Research Institute, Joanneum Research Forschungsgesellschaft mbH, Plymouth Marine Laboratory, Institut des Geosciences de l'Environnement - Université Grenoble Alpes, Institute of Geodesy and Cartography, UiT the Arctic University of Norway, the University of Warsaw and others.

We are a member of the European Open Science Cloud.

Our services are used by leading European firms and scientific institutions from various market sectors, which process big data sets, including the European Space Agency (ESA), the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), Mercator Ocean International, German Aerospace Centre (DLR), the EGI and many others.