PSNC provides cloud services for Europe – EOSC

Open access to data and information, known as the EOSC (European Open Science Cloud), is an ecosystem of environments made up of different infrastructures for storing and processing scientific research results according to the principles of open science in the EU. The EOSC process was initiated by the European Commission in 2015 and is one of the largest open science efforts in the world.

The main objective of establishing the EOSC initiative was to create a trusted, virtual, federated online environment, crossing scientific boundaries and disciplines, for storing, sharing, processing and reusing digital objects used in scientific research (such as publications, data and software) in accordance with the principles of FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable), i.e. the principles of sharing scientific results so that they are searchable, accessible, but also support open standards for interoperability and are reusable in research and scientific work.

As part of the European Commission’s policy, a European association, EOSC aisblwas established, bringing together more than 100 entities: government, universities, research and development units and economic entities interested in implementing the concept of open data. The EOSC aisbl Steering Committee (General Assembly), the EOSC Implementation Group and working groups are working to define the principles and plan for open data and open science in accordance with the FAIR principles.

The next step in making the construction of the EOSC a reality is to provide services that will be used not only by science and the European economy, but also by any other interested organisation in the world. This primarily concerns the results of research work funded by the European Commission under programmes including: Horizon Europe, Eurofusion, EuroHPC, as well as national grants funded by member states.

A multi-stage technical dialogue was conducted, as a result of which a consortium was selected consisting of service and infrastructure operators in the academic and commercial environment:
1) Poznan Supercomputing and Networking Center – main contractor,
2) Safespring (Sweden) – subcontractor,
3) Nordunet (Denmark) – subcontractor.

According to Maciej Brzeźniak, architect of the solution, the prestigious contract obtained by PSNC to build a production environment for the European Research Area in 2024-2026, with the possibility of extension until December 2027, will be used by tens of thousands of users.

The services and the infrastructure constitute a distributed system made available in PSNC and Safespring data centers with the help of NORDUNET – a network operator in the Baltic countries.

Dr Eng. Norbert Meyer, coordinator of the activities, confirms the possibility of using the services of the National Data Storage (Universal infrastructure for sharing, storage and effictive processing of large data volumes in HPC, Big Data and Artificial Intelligence models), a project financed from the structural funds of the Operational Programme Innovative Economy (OP IR) under Measure 4.2 – Construction of research infrastructure for science.