Cloud Procurement

Last week Helix Nebula - The Science Cloud (HNSciCloud) launched a €5.3 million tender for the establishment of a European hybrid cloud platform. The purpose of the platform is to support the deployment of high-performance computing and big-data capabilities for scientific research.

The award decision for the first Call for Tender for Cloud Services (CLOUD I) was signed. The European Commission received 20 offers from 12 tenderers

The HNSciCloud is a European pre-commercial procurement (PCP) project co-funded by the European Commission Horizon 2020 Work Programme, which kicked-off in January 2016.

Driven by the Pre-Commercial Procurement (PCP) commitment of leading research organisations from across Europe, HNSciCloud creates a competitive marketplace of innovative cloud services serving scientific users from a wide range of domains.

This paper provides public sector organizations guidance on addressing common challenges with cloud computing services procurement and will reflect alignment with the Federal Government’s “Cloud First” policy per the Federal Cloud Computing Strategy.

Are you from Public Sector & Are you Procuring Cloud Services through a Tender Procedure? Then look no further as this newspiece covers all you need to know to get it right:
1. Get advice: wiz.picse.eu;
2. Learn from others: Procuring cloud services today report
3. Understand the cloud procurement process The PICSE Research Procurement Model report
4. Be aware of the barriers to overcome them Read the Cloud Procurement Barriers Report!

Interesting presentation from Marnix Dekker, CISO team, European Commission about the EC as cloud customer.

ICT2015 this year was the perfect location for PICSE to meet opinion leaders from EU funding agencies, industry and research sector to discuss the main challenges and best practices related to cloud procurement.

The PICSE project recently published a report on the experiences of ten European public sector organizations that have either carried out a process to procure cloud services, or are considering doing so in the near future.

Last week, the 6th RDA Plenary meeting took place in Paris. Over six hundred representatives of international & European research organisations attended the event. Nicholas Ferguson, Trust-IT Services, presented the PICSE Wizard to the audience. The audience was particularly interested in finding out more about how to procure cloud services through their institution.

PICSE Wizard (http://wiz.picse.eu): Cloud service procurement made easy!
Are you a Procurement official, IT manager or procurement initiator? Then, complete the PICSE wizard easy-to-use services to help you make informed decisions about how to procure cloud services. The PICSE Wizard is a web-based application that public research organisations can use to obtain guidelines on the most suitable model for procuring cloud services, to make a self-assessment and evaluate their procurement procedures. Each checklist comes with a set of recommendations & tips.