Enabling innovation with Azure for education and research institutes
By working with OCRE, we will accelerate cloud adoption and enhance capabilities in the education and research community. This page will be regularly updated with all the latest news and events that will help you find all the information you need about OCRE and the advantages of procuring Microsoft Azure for education through the OCRE framework.
Discover more about the OCRE framework
Utilising the OCRE framework for research and IT
European academic research and science is at the forefront of solving global challenges at a rapidly increasing rate and is dominated by exponentially growing data. Researchers are overcoming the challenges of scale, collaboration, and compliance, while minimising cost and complexity, by using Microsoft Azure to achieve unmatched time to insight, scale, and price-performance on the cloud built for high performance computing, data, and analytics.
University’s central technical infrastructure requirements are increasingly complex with thousands of applications and services and a diverse infrastructure. Microsoft Azure provides a secure, scalable cloud infrastructure that will run your mission-critical applications with increased operational agility and security.
Using Microsoft Azure’s high-performance computing, data and analytics – procured through the Open Clouds for Research Environments (OCRE) framework – institutions can accelerate tender award processes and overcome the challenges of scale, collaboration and compliance while minimising cost and complexity.
Making Azure adoption easier with OCRE
The OCRE framework, available to GÉANT members, enables over 10,000 universities and research institutions, served by 40 National Research and Education Network (NREN) organisations across Europe, to benefit from:
- Significant discounts across Azure services
- Ready-to-use contracts designed to satisfy national and European public sector procurement regulations and GDPR requirements
Additional benefits include:
- Significantly reduced network traffic costs with Microsoft services connected to the high-performance data networks provided by GÉANT and its NREN partners
- Leverage Azure AD to provide federated SSO and enable RBAC and governance of Azure services
- Azure Professional Direct Support discounts
- Leverage Microsoft Software Assurance and Student Use Benefits to further reduce Azure costs