# Sparkle OCRE Project Podcast - Episode 1 **Title:** Cloud Computing and Benefits for Research and Education Community **Speaker:** Paola Crobu, Product Manager Multicloud Solutions at Sparkle **Duration:** Approximately 10 minuti --- ## Transcript **Introduction:** Welcome and thanks for joining us for Sparkle's OCRE Project Podcast, a series of deep dives to discover trending topics in the cloud sector and better understand the future developments for the telecommunication industry and benefits for research and education communities. You can discover more about Sparkle and this podcast on our website www.tisparkle.com or you can follow us on LinkedIn or Twitter. This is Episode 1 and today we have Paola Crobu with us, Product Manager Multicloud Solutions at Sparkle, sharing her views on cloud computing and the benefits for the research and education community. --- **Interviewer:** Good morning Paola, today we are here to speak about Sparkle and its activity as an international cloud service provider. Just to start, can you briefly tell us Sparkle's role in the TLC industry and what is your job in the company? **Paola Crobu:** Sparkle is a leading global telecommunication service provider, first in Italy and among the top 10 worldwide, offering a complete range of IP, data, cloud, data center, mobile and voice solutions, designed to meet the fast-changing needs of enterprise customers, of OTT, of internet service providers, of fixed and mobile operators. Sparkle is also the international arm of Telecom Italia. It owns and manages a global proprietary network of above 600,000 km of fibers, which include three major systems in Europe, in the Mediterranean and in the Americas. As well as extensive ownership in major international cable systems. We have a direct presence in 33 countries, a commercial coverage at a global scale and then we can count on an international workforce distributed worldwide. Thanks to that and to our portfolio of services, Sparkle is able to fulfill its mission of providing customers with the best cost and top performance solution in the international telecommunication market. With respect to me, well, I'm a multi-cloud solution product manager. **Interviewer:** Paola, cloud has been around for decades and many companies are adopting cloud solutions to increase the levels of safety of data and efficiency. But why should research and education entities consider cloud adoption? **Paola Crobu:** Cloud technologies offer powerful tools to researchers, to professors, to students. From accelerating the speed of processing massive data set to improving collaborations through shared tools and data storage. The recent push to online courses and remote learning, for example, requires cloud-based applications and tools to deliver online lessons, to set assignments, to share educational resources, to mark the assessment and to communicate with students. However, buying cloud services can be a complex and time-consuming process for many institutions as they have to discover the best solution available in the market and the right provider by themselves. And then they have to manage all the legal and contractual burden associated to this procurement activity. **Interviewer:** How can research and education institutions be supported in their move to the cloud? **Paola Crobu:** In Europe, research and education institutions can benefit from OCRE, which stands for Open Cloud for Research Environment, a project precisely created with the goal to facilitate cloud adoption by research and education actors, a project in part funded by the European Commission. But OCRE is also the consortium managing and leading the project, a consortium led by GÉANT, which is the Pan-European Network Service Provider for the R&D community, a consortium which incorporates also organizations like CERN, RHEA and TRUST-IT. And OCRE is also a contractual framework. Thanks to ready-to-use agreement with this selected provider, the OCRE cloud framework is in fact a standardized contractual vehicle, which is the purchase of the cloud solutions by the research and education institutions. **Interviewer:** How does it work? **Paola Crobu:** As already done in 2016 by GÉANT in the previous edition of OCRE named CloudEAS Framework, OCRE gathered the requirement from the research and education community and then launched a Pan-European tender aimed to identify the cloud service providers who best match the needs of the scientific community. The selected and qualified providers are then incorporated into a contractual framework and into a service catalog. They are connected to GÉANT network and to the single sign-on system, bringing them into the heart of this community ICT ecosystem. The institute seeking to procure cloud services have to simply select from a list of qualified compliant providers in their country. **Interviewer:** How does Sparkle fit into this? **Paola Crobu:** First of all, Sparkle was already selected by GÉANT in 2016 in the above-mentioned CloudEAS Framework. And then we can say that Sparkle has collaborated with GÉANT since that year to provide cloud solutions to the research and education community, while reducing the complexity and the cost associated to the immigration to the cloud. Now with OCRE, Sparkle has been selected among a large number of international operators as the sole accredited Google integrator in 27 countries. Then we will provide Google-based cloud solutions, together with automation tools which facilitate the provisioning process, together with the tools which allow the monitoring and control of the cost and of the consumptions, everything in single sign-on. Thanks to the federation with EduGAIN, which is the inter-federation service connected to identity federations worldwide. **Interviewer:** How does Sparkle differentiate itself from similar services offered by the other OCRE service providers? **Paola Crobu:** As said, we will provide Google Cloud solutions from the basic one, like virtual machine and data storage, to the most advanced tools developed by Google in the area of the high computing, of the artificial intelligence, of the machine learning. But Google Cloud is also a workspace and a workspace for education, the former G Suite, the collaboration tool that all we know and that we are today even more familiar than in the past due to the online lessons during the pandemic. Then we will provide also this tool to the research and education institutions, a tool which improves teaching, learning, collaboration and creativity. Furthermore, Sparkle expert team of consultant will accompany customers in order to ensure that the cloud solutions are perfectly integrated into their daily research activity. And in this task, Sparkle will be supported by Nuvola, a sister company, which is the center of excellence for cloud and edge computing of Telecom Italia Group. **Interviewer:** What is the value that Sparkle assigns to this activity? **Paola Crobu:** We strongly believe, especially in this particular period in time, in the need and importance to develop, deliver and promote advanced network and digital capabilities in order to improve and speed up the activities of the research and education community, which is vital and crucial for the far future development of our society. Thanks to the work of GÉANT, of entities like GÉANT, and thanks to projects like OCRE, Sparkle can contribute to the cloud adoption by the research and education community so that they can in turn fully explore and exploit the opportunities offered by the digitalization and then further and further develop their projects which benefit of the society and the economy, also in fields of the real life, like the air transport safety, the medical imaging, or the energy smart systems. And we allow this possibility also to smaller organizations, having a narrow budget, which can then access to the best IT resource applications and tools. Together with keeping improving our offering and our asset, this is the way in which Sparkle can play its role of promoting open innovation, collaboration and knowledge sharing among research and education institutions. And we're really proud of that, especially in this difficult moment for the entire world. **Interviewer:** Thanks Paola for joining us today, showing such interesting points on cloud, details on the project and the value of these activities for Sparkle. Stay tuned and do not miss the next episode of this OCRE project podcast series. Later on, we will meet other important actors in the project. --- **End of Transcript - Episode 1**