Deliverables

This document provides a state of the art analysis of how public research organisations procure ICT services and identifies the challenges of procuring cloud services. The document presents different models to procure cloud services suitable for public research organisations and provides procurement checklists that can be used by IT managers and procurers working in the public sector.

The acquisition of IT services is key to any public or private organisation and the advent of cloud computing requires innovation in the procurement of cloud services. Although cloud computing has become increasingly popular, it appears that potential customers, in the public sector in general and in the research community in particular, are facing barriers that inhibit the wider adoption of cloud services. This report presents a list of barriers to cloud services procurement identified through literature, in-depth interviews of IT managers surveyed over a period of 3 months, and input provided by the PICSE Task Force members as well as intergovernmental research organisations such as CERN and EMBL. The survey demonstrated that barriers to cloud service procurement mainly relate to the adoption of new technology (i.e. cloud computing) and the procurement process itself.

This report will include: a collection of procurement good practices in the public sector, both in Research and Public Administration, which would cover real life examples in Europe as well as outside the EEA (e.g. USA); a comparison between procurement practices in the public and private sector and a description of how current good practices can overcome barriers and the identification of unaddressed challenges.