EGI’s main goal is to empower researchers from all disciplines to carry out data and compute intensive science. We are also committed to foster relationships with industry and SMEs.
SMEs are considered one of the key drivers for economic growth and innovation. Over the past years, the European Commission has been putting SMEs in the lead for delivering innovation to the market.

EGI is supporting this objective by exploring opportunities for strategic partnerships with SMEs. For example, during the EGI-Engage project, a dedicated team was setup to establish a Business Engagement Programme for developing relationships with SMEs to co-develop support solutions for their computing needs. This resulted in the accomplishment of 11 business use cases, with many more still in progress.

One example is our work with Terradue, a SME based in Rome, Italy. The company specialises on challenges associated with the handling of massive and complex data streams that can support thematic expertise. Terradue Cloud Platform is addressing this topic with solutions to transfer Earth Observation (EO) processing algorithms to cloud infrastructures. The platform also provides services to optimise the connectivity of the data centres with integrated discovery & processing methods.

The Terradue & EGI collaboration started in 2012-2014 as part of the European Commission’s support action “Helix Nebula – The Science Cloud”. In September 2016, a first agreement between a group of EGI Resource Centres and Terradue was established. Terradue has since then been working with EGI Cloud resources and teams, extending Terradue’s offer to users, by integrating their services on the Terradue Cloud Platform for the processing of satellite data.

Here are some highlights:

• Terradue’s participation in the EC H2020 NextGEOSS encompasses 10 Pilots, innovating services as part of the Group on Earth Observations support to UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (e.g. Food Security to achieve zero hunger, Solar Energy for affordable and clean energy).
• Also, Terradue’s leading role in the ESA Thematic Exploitation Platform for Geohazards and for Hydrology encompasses data processing services contributed to the Committee on Earth Observation Satellites goals (e.g. DLR’s InSAR Browse service at 200m resolution covering the world tectonic areas, and at 50m resolution covering volcanoes worldwide) and to European international cooperation (e.g. Niger River).

One key benefit of the renewed MoU is, for Terradue, to further integrate TEP services with the EGI infrastructure using the allotted resources provided by the selected EGI cloud providers as described in the related Operations Level Agreements (OLAs) and Service Level Agreement (SLA). Six of them will be contributing as part of this MoU a capacity of 538 CPU cores, 14TB of RAM and 10TB of storage.

Based on initial proof of concepts, Terradue and EGI will also refine a business model for long-term service delivery and support, and continuous operations that will provide a direct benefit for Terradue Cloud Platform users.