Blue-Cloud D6.5 Blue-Cloud Services Exploitation and Sustainability Plan

Since October 2019, the pilot Blue-Cloud project (www.blue-cloud.org) is well underway and its developments have progressed considerably as part of 'The Future of Seas and Oceans Flagship Initiative' of the EU H2020 programme. The leading principle of Blue-Cloud is to federate services from Research Infrastructures and e-infrastructures to provide researchers with open access to data, algorithms, and computing resources, instrumental for deepening research of oceans, European seas, coastal and inland waters. It combines both the interests of European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) and the blue research communities. It is undertaken by leading European ocean and marine data and knowledge initiatives such as EMODnet and Copernicus Marine Environmental Monitoring Service (Copernicus Marine Service), together with leading marine and ocean research infrastructures, the so-called "Blue Data Infrastructures" (BDIs), and major e-infrastructures. 

From the start of the Blue-Cloud project, activities have not only focused on technical and scientific developments, but also on developing a Blue-Cloud Service Exploitation and Sustainability Plan in order to secure an exploitation and continuation of Blue-Cloud services beyond the project duration (originally planned end September 2022; contractually amended to end March 2023). Therefore, with input from all partners, an initial Blue-Cloud Service Exploitation and Sustainability Plan, Deliverable D6.3 was compiled and released in March 2021. At that time, there were still a lot of developments on-going and further planned for building and deploying the Blue-Cloud service components. This implicated, that in D6.3 the structure and contours of the plan could be sketched, while also being confronted with several open questions, which should be solved in time. 

The goal of formulating the final Blue-Cloud Service Exploitation and Sustainability Plan has been on the one hand, to define a feasible exploitation model and to secure with partners the operation and exploitation of the Blue-Cloud results for at least 3 years following the project end, and on the other hand, to explore and pave the way to longer sustainability, supported by major stakeholders. For the latter there has been major synergy and interaction with another task in the Blue-Cloud project, namely the development of a Blue-Cloud Roadmap 2030. By exploring and providing longer term sustainability perspectives, partners became more motivated to ensure and commit to the planned short-term operation and exploitation. 

This document is the final Blue-Cloud Service Exploitation and Sustainability Plan, Deliverable D6.5, drafted and finalised in September – November 2022, 20 months after its initial release as D6.3. During this time, Blue-Cloud services have matured, more insights were gained for answering earlier open questions, and the exploration for further EU funding was successful. Recently, EU funding has been acquired for the Blue-Cloud 2026 project, expected to start January 2023, which secures not only continuation of the Blue-Cloud services for another 42 months, but also a further development and expansion of the services and partnership. 

A fundamental element in the approach for the Blue-Cloud Service Exploitation and Sustainability Plan and the recent success for the Blue-Cloud 2026 bid has been engaging all project partners in the process in order to build a Blue-Cloud team, with each partner having roles in development and possibly in future exploitation and sustainability. Also, there has been valuable input from dialogues and consultations involving external stakeholders that were undertaken during the development of the Blue-Cloud Roadmap to 2030 development. The Roadmap analyses provided recommendations for the future capitalisation of the Blue-Cloud results and their prospective development in the medium (2025) and long-term (2030). 

Central in the Blue-Cloud Service Exploitation and Sustainability Plan are the Blue-Cloud Key Exploitable Results (KERs). These are the core services that have been developed with Blue-Cloud's underpinning technology and innovative concepts, building on existing EU capabilities and deployed through a smart federation of leading European marine data and e-infrastructures. 

• A Data Discovery & Access Service (B-C DD&AS): a federation of key European blue data infrastructures , to facilitate finding and retrieving multi-disciplinary datasets in a common and efficient way, for local use (at user'sr own computers) as well as for use in the Blue-Cloud analytical environment (VRE). 
• A Virtual Research Environment (VRE): Providing a cloud-based, analytical and publishing framework as a federation of computing platforms and analytical services, hosted at leading e-infrastructures , for constructing, testing, and operating virtual laboratories ("VLabs"). A VLab is a web-based, problem-solving environment that enables users across different physical locations and scientific domains to collaborate efficiently in an ongoing way, providing them with tools and services to develop analytical methods, mine data, test results and share scientific outputs towards solving complex problems. 

Next to the DD&AS, and the VRE as major core services, Blue-Cloud also has developed and deployed five multi-disciplinary Blue-Cloud Virtual Labs, configured with specific analytical workflows and serving as real-life Demonstrators, which can be adopted and adapted for other inputs and analyses. These Blue-Cloud VLabs showcase (reproducible) analytical methods and workflows that have been developed to support marine researchers across different thematic areas , and which can trigger new, community-driven applications to support wider policy and societal goals. As such, these Blue-Cloud VLabs are also Key Exploitable Results. 

At the on-site All-Hands project meeting end May – early June 2022, brainstorm sessions were undertaken about the exploitation specifications for each of the Blue-Cloud Key Exploitable Results (KERs). The assessments described in this document clarify who are the target users and potential enlarged interested audience of the services, and what type of needs they address. The business maturity of these services was also analysed, and considerations made around their scalability, possible expansions, and how these services can have synergistic impact for other EU projects and major EU initiatives, such as the Digital Twins of the Ocean (DTO) and EOSC. 

The Blue-Cloud 2026 proposal was submitted in April 2022 to the EU HORIZON-INFRA-2022-EOSC-01-03 Call for a 'FAIR and open data sharing in support of healthy oceans, seas, coastal and inland waters', and received a positive review and invitation for grant negotiation, with tentative starting date on January 2023. It aims at further developing and expanding the initial Blue-Cloud services, inspired by feedback and suggestions received earlier, and enlarging the consortium with additional Blue Data Infrastructures, e-infrastructures, and experts in marine data management and research. Blue-Cloud 2026 provides great opportunities for achieving increased impacts which in time should lead to longer term (2030) guarantees. Therefore, feasible business scenarios have been formulated as for 2023 to 2026 and for 2026 to 2030. The expectation is that by 2030 Blue-Cloud should have achieved a strong position as an essential component and public commodity in the European marine data landscape, complementing and interacting with leading EU initiatives such as EMODnet and Copernicus Marine, strengthening the cooperation with and cohesion between Blue-Data Infrastructures, and contributing to the successful implementation of the EU Digital Twins of the Ocean (DTO) initiative, and the further roll-out of EOSC.