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.
The Cloud for Europe PCP tender Results Announcement Ceremony will take place on the 10th of September 2015 in Rome, followed by a Certification Workshop on 11 September 2015. Both events are held as open public sessions and are hosted by Agenzia per l’Italia Digitale (AgID) and the Italian Ministry of Research, at Viale Liszt 21, Rome.
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.
The cloud is coming to science in Europe... but what's happening in USA? The Pervasive Technology Institute at Indiana University has received $6.6 million grant to create NSF’s first science and engineering research cloud, Jetstream. IU is expected to receive a total of about $11 million from NSF over the next five years to create, implement and operate Jetstream, making it the largest grant IU has ever received to deliver computational and data storage services to the national research community.
"Implementing new rules in public procurement is key to progressing accessibility in ICT, including cloud computing. The EU created an accessibility standard to help public administrations integrate accessibility in their procurement policies. It proposes a series of requirements that can be applied to a wide array of technologies used to deliver public services ranging from mobile apps to websites. Implementing the standard is a relatively easy fix for many of Europe’s problems in completing the Digital Single Market.
Europe’s researchers have access to super-fast networks, common data storage facilities, and shared computing resources. The challenge now is to link them all together into a single science cloud.
Digital transformation is absolutely crucial to any organisation whether public or private. It is at the very core of the digital single market to ensure Europe reaps the socio-economic benefits of new technologies. Cloud computing has the potential to reduce IT expenditure and boost organisational agility while at the same time improving the scope for delivering flexible high-quality new services.
This document describes the experience of ten public sector organisations across Europe who have either carried out a process to procure cloud services, or are considering doing so. The experiences vary in terms of success and offer insights into how the procurement of cloud services is impacting on their current processes. Read more...
Interesting article by James Mitchell, CEO at Strategic Blue, financial cloud broker & PICSE Task Force member. The article focuses on how cloud computing is affecting the IT sales channel, and how the way that a cloud service provider structures its distribution and reseller contracts profoundly affects the behaviour of the channel...with knock-on effects on whether the cloud buyer is better off going direct, or continuing to work with the IT resellers who make a business out of understanding the IT needs of their customers.
This study provides quantitative estimates of the impact of cloud computing on the EU economy by 2020. The study looks at the potential economic impact that the adoption of cloud-based computing solutions by the public and private sector could have on EU economy as a whole.