OCRE
Open Clouds for Research Environments
OCRE and Proact, the right combination for hybrid cloud solutions for NRENs!
Thanks to the OCRE framework, NREN members in Europe will have quick access to Proact’s cloud services from January 2021.
Learn more about what this agreement means and how our offering is uniquely positioned to help you accelerate your cloud acceptance while selecting the right services to help you stimulate IT innovation.
Accelerating cloud adoption in the European research and education community
From January 2021, NREN members in Europe can gain rapid access to Proact’s cloud services, thanks to the OCRE framework.
Discover more about what this framework agreement means and how our offering is uniquely positioned to help you accelerate your cloud adoption, as you select the right services to help you drive innovation through IT.
What is OCRE?
OCRE is the Open Clouds for Research Environments project and aims to accelerate cloud adoption in the European research community, by bringing together cloud providers, Earth Observation (EO) organisations and the research and education community, through ready-to-use service agreements. All the qualified suppliers can be seen on the OCRE website at
www.ocre-project.eu/services/cloud-suppliers.
What Proact can offer NREN members
As part of the OCRE frame agreement, all NREN members can choose to use Proact Hybrid Cloud (PHC) and associated professional services, such as consultancy, implementation and optimisation services.
PHC is our very own Infrastructure as a Service platform. You can find out more about it in the section below. Essentially, it provides all the scalable storage, compute and networking you would normally get from a public cloud hyperscaler, but with some very important advantages.
And in addition to the right technology, Proact can also offer all the help that you need, in the shape of professional services that cover everything from consultancy, design and implementation, to maintenance, service management and optimisation.
Powered by VMware
On top of our PHC hardware, we’ve also built a virtualisation layer using technology from VMware (Cloud Director). This enables automation and the provisioning of VMs while concurrently providing advanced security and networking virtualisation.
Learn more about Proact Hybrid Cloud (PHC)
PHC is our proven IaaS and we believe it represents exactly what a cloud should be – flexible, easy-to-use, with transparent pricing.
PHC means that NREN members can now access different IT services, whether they’re on-premises, in a private cloud, hosted in one of Proact’s European-based data centres or in the public cloud.
We think there are three main reasons to choose PHC (for more reasons to choose Proact, see ‘Why Proact?’ below):
PHC is our own platform
We blueprinted and built PHC from the ground-up, based on our knowledge and experience. If you take advantage of PHC’s resources, you’re dealing directly with the company that offers it, not with a third party that is managing resources from one of the big hyperscalers.
PHC is the local option
Many of our customers prefer to use PHC IaaS because we are based in Europe. As a PHC customer, you can even choose your preferred location. This means that no foreign government can request access to your data (such as the US Government in the case of the CLOUD Act).
Cost efficiency
We work with you to discover exactly what you need then we build it. Because we create an environment that matches your needs exactly, there is no wastage. Should your needs change, your service delivery manager will be able to optimise your infrastructure as necessary.
How the OCRE framework agreement works
Through the OCRE framework agreement, Proact has already qualified to provide infrastructure as a service to Europe’s research and education community.
This means that, as an NREN member, you do not need to publish further costly and time-consuming tenders to find partners to deliver the cloud services you need. The service agreement is ready-to-use.
It also means that a pricing structure has been agreed, so that you have certainty around what your cloud services from Proact will cost. For more information, please get in touch using the form below.
Why Proact?
We believe there are many reasons why NREN members will choose Proact to help them accelerate their journey to the cloud. In fact, we already work with many NREN members throughout Europe, so many already know and trust us.
We manage a large amount of data for over 4,000 customers across Europe. We started out in 1994 as storage specialists and today help organisations to store, connect, protect, secure and drive value through their data.
We think NRENs will benefit from consuming their cloud resources from the people who are providing the services around those resources, rather than dealing with a third party who is managing resources from one of the big hyperscalers.
We believe this will help NRENs get the very best – and most personal – service they will need to get the most from their IT.
