Building on the European Cloud Computing Strategy, which calls for a framework of standards to ensure procurers meet compliance obligations, PICSE engaged with procurers across the globe to find durable solutions to their procurement impediments.
To address these problems, PICSE identified key financial and legal constraints impacting cloud services adoption, and provided a range of best practices from both the public and private sectors, in and beyond Europe. These barriers and best practices have been described and analysed in the areas of policy and organisation, processes, staff, and tools.
PICSE has carried out extensive desktop research and has consulted with the main European public research organisations in order to identify the five main steps that characterize the process for procuring ICT services for the research sector. The result of this analysis has allowed PICSE to put together a set of cloud procurement models , which describe the procurement steps in a cloud environment.
Based on these models, PICSE documented and published a series of case studies on how public sector organisations worldwide have either carried out a process to procure cloud services, or are considering doing so. The experiences vary in terms of success and offer insights into how the procurement of cloud services is impacting their current processes.
Procurement checklists have been developed and form the basis of the PICSE Wizard, a web-based application that can be used by public research organisations to obtain guidelines on the most suitable model for procuring cloud services and for the self-assessment and evaluation of their procurement procedures. The PICSE Wizard has been conceived to support IT managers & procurers in charge of the procurement of cloud services in public research organisations and is available online at wiz.picse.eu
PICSE calls for action to harmonise legislation, procurement rules, and European research agencies structuring in order to create a Digital Single Market through:
Competences and organisational culture
Enabling innovation in procurement and services
Stimulating the research cloud ecosystem
Adopting new business models
Validating the benefits
In order to ensure the sustainability of the action, PICSE set out a roadmap for future procurement actions with recommendations for key stakeholders, including public sector research organisations, cloud service providers and policy makers highlighting:
Procurers need new competences to address the shift from purchasing systems for in-house deployment to negotiating and purchasing services.
The supply-side also needs to address changes in the nature of its business, from providing bespoke or turn-key system solutions to managing deployment of the capacity needed to meet variable demand.
The current environment made up of existing in-house resources, publicly funded e-infrastructure and commercial cloud services does not provide a seamless service.
Existing organisational and financial models are no longer appropriate and barriers such as legal constraints are proving difficult to overcome.
The results of the PICSE project have been critically reviewed by an independent taskforce of experience practitioners drawn from the public and private sectors and have been widely distributed and promoted at events around Europe involving policy makers, public research organisations, research communities, publicly funded e-infrastructures and commercial cloud service providers.
