Sparkle will support Géant in 12 countries as an original service provider, offering Sparkle and TIM Cloud Solutions, while in the remaining 18 countries Sparkle will act as a reseller of Amazon Web Services (AWS).
The move comes only a week after Géant, based in Cambridge and Amsterdam, added AWS to its innovative cloud catalogue. With that development, research and education institutions in 28 countries across Europe can now run their compute, storage and network workloads in the AWS cloud. Procurement, contracting and integration is taken care of by Géant and its national research and education network partners.
This means that research and education institutes that are already part of the Géant community can use AWS technologies without undergoing any additional procurement or tender procedures.
Steve Cotter, CEO of Géant, said: “We expect the Cloud Catalogue to deliver real benefit to millions of users across the European research and education communities.”
Sparkle said of yesterday’s announcement that it will support service authentication through eduGain, the global research and education infrastructure for single sign on access.
Sparkle will also provide a direct network peering between Géant and its own data centres, reducing data transport-related costs, and will guarantee a 24×7 service desk.
Delivering Sparkle’s services through Géant significantly reduces cost and complexity, said the company, while providing higher security and better integration of the online services.
Max Peterson, head of EMEA public sector at AWS, said of last week’s Géant announcement: “Students, educators, and researchers are key drivers of technological innovation and the backbone of modern economies. We look forward to helping the European research community use AWS technologies to further invent and advance scientific discovery.”
