Sparkle has been awarded OCRE 2024 Framework provider by GÉANT, the pan-European network and service provider for research and education, to offer cloud solutions and professional services to R&E institutions across all 39 European countries where the scheme is implemented.
OCRE (Open Clouds for Research and Education) 2024 is the third iteration of GÉANT cloud frameworks that since 2016 have enabled and facilitated cloud adoption in the European research and education community. Through ready-to-use service agreements with cloud service providers, the framework which is effective from February 2025 to 2030, also covers public sector entities in addition to R&E institutions and offers a standardized contractual vehicle to ease the purchase of these solutions for over 25,000 organizations.
Already qualified as a selected provider since the first GÉANT cloud framework, under the OCRE 2024 scheme, Sparkle has been awarded as the highest-ranked supplier for Amazon Web Services (AWS) in all 39 countries and for Google Cloud in 19 countries. As a result, Sparkle will continue supporting institutions in their cloud journey by providing cloud solutions blended with professional services, thus reducing the cost and complexity of the transition to the cloud.
“We are very proud of being qualified among the highest ranking OCRE 2024 service providers,” says Annalisa Bonatti, Vice President Enterprise at Sparkle. “This new award is a testament of Sparkle’s long-time commitment and success in offering the best cloud solutions to the R&E community, and it is also an encouragement to continue on this path and support the uptake of new digital services.”
Thanks to its multi-cloud offering, Sparkle provides cloud services across multiple public and private platforms along with management consoles and connectivity services to connect customers’ on-premises cloud facilities to the major public cloud providers through private, high-speed, and secure connections. Cloud computing offers compelling advantages to students, researchers, and institutions, making available virtualized resources ranging from compute, storage, databases, and networking to machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT), and security.
