Pan-European research and education network Géant is on the hunt for infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) providers who can offer its members secure access to the public cloud.

The organisation’s network is used to connect 10,000 educational institutions across the continent working on environmental, medical and space-related research, and operates at speeds of up to 500Gbps.

In a recently published tender, Géant said the overall aim was to give members access to a “transparent and balanced set of community and public cloud services” through its Cloud Catalogue.

As the name suggests, this catalogue lists the names of cloud service providers and how their offerings will meet the needs of Géant members from a security, privacy and integration perspective.

It was formally launched in April 2015 with eight suppliers listed, but the organisation’s head of vendor management, Branko Radojevic, confirmed that it was looking to add more in due course.

“The Cloud Catalogue brings a unique list of service providers, their services and their ability to meet certain requirements imposed by research and education users,”

he said at the time.

“This demonstrates how a collective approach makes cloud services more accessible, and brings great value and clarity to both users and suppliers.”

The tender is a direct follow-on from this and will, the tender notice states, “focus on IaaS cloud services, allowing all public-funded Géant National Research and Education Networks and their users the ability to directly contract these services”.

Furthermore, the document said the tender will be used by the organisation to build out its knowledge of the European cloud market, and how its services can benefit the region’s research and education community.

It also suggests members will be joining forces in the hope their collective economies of scale may result in them getting access to cloud services at a slightly lower cost.

Interested parties have until 19 August 2015 to respond to the tender, which carries a contract period of 48 months.