OCRE: started the funding opportunities for the European research community for using OCRE’s procured Cloud and Earth Observation commercial services.

The OCRE project, an H2020 funded by the European Commission, aims to increase the usage of Cloud and EO services by the European research community by putting available EC funds 9.5M euro, aiming to removing the barriers regarding the service discovery and providing services free-at-the-point-of-the-user.

OCRE started to grant EU research projects for using OCRE’s procured Cloud commodity and EO services through respective open calls in 2019-2020. Additionally, in 2021 additional open calls are foreseen also for projects willing to receive funds for using EO services procured by the OCRE project. Also, a permanent open call for individual researchers is foreseen.

During 2020, OCRE also funded, through another open call, EU projects dealing with research related to COVID-19 and they were the first projects that started the usage of the available commodity services. Additionally, in 2020, the OCRE project closed and awarded EU service providers for the provision of cloud and commodity services and, in early 2021, the Dynamic Purchasing System (DPS) for the procurement of EO services will be opened.

Additionally, during 2020 an External Advisory Board (EAB) was created to assist OCRE in the project awarding process. The EAB is formed by recognized experts from different domains providing OCRE with the balanced knowledge needed to ensure transparency and equality in such an important process.

This presentation will provide an overview of the possibilities offered by OCRE to researchers interested in boosting their activities using commercial cloud services.