NoR initiative

CloudSigma Joins the Network of Resources (NoR) Initiative Sponsored by the European Space Agency

Munich, Germany, September 2020 –CloudSigma is excited to announce that we have joined the Network of Resources (NoR) initiative. The NoR initiative is a venture sponsored by the European Space Agency (ESA). It aims to establish a common framework for the growing amount of Earth Observation (EO) data, software applications, and IT services that have become available from an increasing number of EO exploitation platform providers. Those are funded by the European Commission, ESA, other public agencies, and private investment. 

ESA has created the NoR project in order to facilitate the harmonization of service offerings to users. Therefore, it intends to procure processing services for ESA’s exploitation activities from the various providers participating in the NoR. Combining exploitation and processing platforms, the NoR will support users in procuring services and outsourcing requirements. It will also increase the integration of EO data and information for broader scientific, social, and economic purposes. In this way, it will support the generation of new commercial applications and services.

CloudSigma Selected as a NoR Service Provider

“We are happy to have CloudSigma as a partner on the European Network of Resources (NoR) Portal. CloudSigma offers excellent capabilities in Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and combined with data offerings, we are confident that this will create new possibilities for sustainable uses of Earth Observation imagery and analysis.”Dr. Manfred Krischke, CEO @ cloudeo

The NoR initiative is managed by the geospatial market platform cloudeo and its consortium partners. Cloudeo is acting as the NoR Operator by managing the onboarding of service providers into the NoR Portal. It is also listing services on the NoR Portal, promoting the NoR services worldwide, and procuring such services for commercial users and ESA sponsorship.

On its part, CloudSigma is excited to have been selected from the tender for Resource Tier Service Providers. As an approved NoR Service Provider, CloudSigma’s cloud services will complement and further enrich the NoR Services Portfolio. 

CloudSigma is currently offering six products on the NoR portal. You can visit each individual product from the links below:

  1. Computing Resources
  2. Storage Services
  3. Networking Resources
  4. Operating Systems
  5. SQL Software
  6. Microsoft RDS

CloudSigma’s platform provides an environment with the same degrees of freedom that private in-house environments end-users might have been able to offer. All functionalities are available via an API or the end-user WebApp. Users are able to provision processing, storage, networks, and other fundamental computing resources in an unbundled way meaning CPU, RAM, storage, and bandwidth can be purchased and combined independently to allow the best combination of cloud resources without the limitation of fixed sizes. Thus, any combination of CPU and RAM is possible to achieve.  You can learn in detail about what makes CloudSigma a unique cloud service provider here. 

You can find all of CloudSigma’s solutions that are available in the NoR portal here.

CloudSigma and Earth Observation

CloudSigma has provided cloud services in the area of Earth Observation to many research and education institutions. We are also recurring sponsors of various events in the area of Earth Observation, including the Earth Observation Exploitation Platform Hackathon and the Copernicus Hackathon in Sofia organized by The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) and the European Space Agency (ESA).

On top of that, we are a cloud partner for the initial phase of the OCRE project that aims to bring together cloud providers, Earth Observation (EO) organizations, and the research and education community in order to accelerate cloud adoption.CloudSigma’s participation in the OCRE Vouchers Program allows us to connect with even more members of the European research community.

Our work in the area of Earth Observation has led us to offer a combination between CloudSigma’s powerful computing environment and a dedicated repository for Sentinel-1 data. In place, we also have a standard process for downloading on-demand latest Sentinel-1 images from the Copernicus hub directly to CloudSigma’s repository. Additionally, in the cloud, there is a dedicated image containing various research applications including SNAP, QGIS3, GeoServer, Postgresql 10, and others. 

“CloudSigma has been involved in the space and earth observation arena for many years now with customers such as ESA and ECMWF. The combination of our understanding of the demanding needs of this sector with our services portfolio can be a compelling solution for end-users. We are proud to be participating in the NoR platform that will help accelerate our work of transforming the sector’s requirements onto a cloud infrastructure footing.”Robert Jenkin, CEO @ CloudSigma

We offer a truly flexible cloud platform especially suitable for research, data, and inventions. We are very excited to support the NoR initiative and facilitate the use of cloud environments by researchers! 

If you are a research, development, and pre-commercial user that seeks to innovate your working practices, you can find more information on how to get a voucher for your selected services on the NoR Portal here: https://nor.cloudeo.group/

About CloudSigma

CloudSigma is a pure-cloud infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) provider that’s enabling the digital industrial economy through its highly-available, flexible, enterprise-class hybrid cloud servers and cloud hosting solutions in Europe, the United States, Asia, and Australia. CloudSigma is the most customizable cloud provider on the market. It gives customers full control over their cloud and eliminates restrictions on how users deploy their computing resources. With CloudSigma, customers can provision processing, storage, networks, and other fundamental computing resources as they please. Customers can also extend private networks out of existing infrastructure and elastically into CloudSigma’s IaaS cloud. Thus, they can create easy to manage and transparent hybrid cloud solutions. For more information, please visit www.CloudSigma.com or find the company on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google+.

About cloudeo

cloudeo operates a unique, vendor-independent, data-agnostic market platform through which customers can obtain professional geoinformation services from leading national and international providers at low cost. Services include dedicated solutions for many industries; such as agriculture, urban and landscape planning, logistics, telecommunications, and water management. Customers are provided with high-resolution imagery, 3D terrain models, thematic maps, and sensor data for a wide range of applications.

cloudeo makes it easy for partners to enter the market on a local, national, or international basis. Our cloud-based platform empowers new business models while enabling production automation, delivery, and administration. For these reasons, it is cost-effective, transparent, and reliable. For more information, please visit https://www.cloudeo.group/ or find the company on Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube.

Dc6a260e1cece247741e591e933c58fd?s=80&r=g

About Zhenya Mocheva

Zhenya is a Digital Marketing Expert at CloudSigma, focusing on brand strategy, social media marketing and digital marketing campaigns. She is passionate about the continuous innovation within the digital environment and the endless growth opportunities that inbound marketing brings.