CloudBank EU NGI

Website

https://ngiatlantic.eu/funded-experiments/cloudbank-eu-ngi

The CloudBank EU NGI experiment scope is to accelerate the adoption of public cloud services in Europe’s public funded research sector.

ProjectID

NGI-ATLANTIC:OC2-187

Acronym

CloudBankEU

Additional Info

CloudBank provides a set of managed services to access public cloud for research, supporting specialised cost management and optimisation. The experiment objective is to address technical, financial, and legal challenges, determining whether CloudBank can be successfully used by Europe’s research communities. The experiment extended CloudBank through the GEANT Network and EduGAIN service to the European research organizations, thereby paving the way for the introduction of European cloud service providers and the transatlantic infrastructure resulting from it to be used.
The results of the CloudBankEU experiment with CERN and UCSD during 2021 have made the case for cloud services procurement and usage for the benefit of different sectors of European research stimulating a shift of approach, where both organisations and funding bodies can contribute their own funds, in a joint-funding model. CloudBank will continue to foster strategic links to future procurement activities of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) and offer cloud access and cost tracking capabilities for collaborations in several research domains. European research organisations other than CERN have already expressed interest in probing CloudBank to manage their recently signed cloud contracts.

Enduser Relevance

CloudBank leads to a simplification of public cloud service procurement processes for the public research sector, integrating these into a hybrid computing model and facilitating a smooth transition to a modern and heterogeneous cloud infrastructure.