Azure through the Géant Framework
Atea is an approved reseller for Microsoft Azure to National Research and Education Networks (NRENs). The service is a part of Géant’s Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) farmework, and provides a cloud-based offering tailor-made for the research and education community in 36 European countries, based on Microsoft Azure, and available through GÉANT’s innovative Cloud Catalogue.
Thousands of universities, schools and research institutions can now benefit from Microsoft Azure cloud services with procurement, contracting and integration taken care of by GÉANT and the NREN community under a common GÉANT IaaS framework agreement, making Microsoft Azure cloud computing an easy-to-use option for the research and education communities, with greater cost effectiveness, and dedicated support.
Key benefits include:
- Institutions can buy and use Microsoft Azure directly, without the need for complex and time-consuming tenders and contract procedures while benefiting from volume discounts;
- Framework contracts are compliant with EU privacy and data security regulations;
- Users can login to the Microsoft Azure services using single sign-on (SSO), via their institutional identity management solutions;
- Network traffic costs are significantly reduced, with Microsoft Azure services connected to the high-performance data networks provided by GÉANT and its NREN partners;
- Support is available for moving workloads to Microsoft Azure;
- Existing Microsoft licensing arrangements can be leveraged through BYOL (bring your own licensing);
- Enterprise cloud management tools enable control, oversight and delegation to a community of users and group;
The Atea business model:
Atea helps eligible customers to onboard the Azure agreement and after signing, the customers can display and take advantage of the discounted prices. Our business model with Géant is simple – we don’t apply markup on the discounted prices. Instead we are aiming to build strong relationship with our Azure customers acting as a partner with expert knowledge of cloud services. Microsoft will reward us with incentives based on the customers consumption, so if the customer doesn’t consume, we don’t make any money. We have developed several workshops that will bring value to our customers at the same time as their consumption grows. We are also providing ISV through our subsidiary AppXite with services like Managed Services and Transformation Services (application & commerce).
Special pricing is available through the GEANT framework including:
- Discount on all metered SKU’s
- Azure consumption credit
- Discounts for data flowing out of Azure (egress)
- Discounts on a dedicated data pipe (ExpressRoute)
Looking ahead!
The next step is to strengthen our relationship with the Géant customers and offer our quality services mentioned above. Our challenge is to become the Géant customers trusted advisor since many of the universities and research institutions have been working in cloud environment for many years and managed to build up good inhouse competence themselves. We also have newly onboarded customers with great potential – and it’s crucial that we work close with these customers and help them in their journey.
– Mattias Carleson, Sales Specialist, Atea SE