2024 was the year in which the GÉANT Association started significant transitional processes to position and prepare the Association and its community for the future, while continuing to operate our network and deliver our services at the highest level of reliability.
Throughout the year, conversations with our members and partners focused on the wider need to deliver our network and services ‘as one’, to ensure the best possible service for all of our community. This meant that not only did we refresh our Interconnection Policy, but that in parallel we adapted to the security clauses in the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) and Digital Europe Programme (DEP) funding envelopes, by adjusting our Association statutes and ensuring the GÉANT Association continues to meet the eligibility criteria of these programmes. In this context the GÉANT Association, just like many of our members, started an ISO27001 certification process to enhance and document our security maturity. Our ability to respond to public procurement across the EU Members States was well tested: initially with the EOSC.eu Node procurement, where GÉANT became a key partner in the delivery, and latterly in Q4 when years of following the developments in EuroHPC and preparing the community came to fruition, when the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking (JU) published the hyperconnectivity tender with a submission date in early 2025.
When it comes to projects, 2024 was again a year of new beginnings and successful continuation. GN5-1 came to an end and the successor project GN5-2 was successfully submitted to commence on 1 January 2025. The EUMEDplus project was launched in September, representing a significant step forward in enhancing digital connectivity and research collaboration across the Arab Mediterranean countries and Europe and ensuring the Medusa cable system will reach thriving communities. With the EaPConnect project ending in 2025, we also invited the EaPConnect partners in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine to fully join the GÉANT membership, bringing long-term sustainability to the region.
We commenced a new level of engagement with the European e-infrastructure partners in the e-infrastructure Assembly when we signed an MoU in October 2024. This MoU focuses on increasing our visibility as underlying providers to the European Research and Knowledge Areas and Europe’s Research Infrastructures. As the GÉANT community, we continued our involvement with the Open Science environment, through the EOSC Association and its community, and came together in a new innovation programme activity which pilots a Digital Research Environment for GÉANT and its members.
Further preparing our future, we carried out the “Foresight 2030 – Navigating Change” Study, prepared by the team of authors led by our Polish member PSNC with the help of experts from GÉANT members, as well as extensive input from the wider community.
And, last but not least, the GÉANT Association experienced a significant change in November, when Erik Huizer stepped down after seven very successful years as the Association’s CEO. Erik brought the merger of DANTE and TERENA to a successful conclusion, when he created one flourishing culture across the two GÉANT offices and led the team with safe hands and creativity through the pandemic. He initiated the support for our colleagues in URAN, after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Erik brought stability and consistent growth to the GÉANT organisation, and I would like to again express my gratitude to him on behalf of the entire Association.
I am very pleased that in late November, Lise Fuhr joined GÉANT as our new CEO. Lise joined us from ETNO, where she served for nine years as Director General. With a history of positions in public registry organisations, Lise is also Chair of the Danish Cyber security organisation Security Tech Space and a member of the United Nations Internet Governance Forum Leadership Panel. It is my pleasure to again welcome Lise to the GÉANT Association and to wish her success in guiding the organisation and our membership into a thriving future.
2025 is likely to bring its share of changes, making sure that we continue our evolution to remain the R&E community’s reliable partner, in a time where the geopolitical relationships are thoroughly tested. Let us remain an anchor for the intercontinental relationships of our community by living our values and supporting colleagues worldwide.
2024 was again a year of new beginnings and successful continuation.
First of all, let me say how welcome I’ve been made to feel since I joined this community in mid-November. The warmth shown to me by our members, partners, and the GÉANT staff has been very much appreciated as I learn about the many different aspects of this community. This is a community with an incredibly strong sense of purpose, and through our collaboration and positive engagement we can deliver so much together to benefit research and education in Europe and beyond.
My first day was spent at the November General Assembly (GA) meeting and it was a great opportunity to meet so many of our members, and to hear about the varying challenges we’re facing and the joint opportunities that lie ahead of us.
The members are the core of GÉANT, so I enjoyed visiting members with our partner relations team, learning first-hand how we can continue to serve and support our membership in what is a rapidly changing environment. These visits by the team are an essential part of this collaboration, as illustrated by the fact that around 150 NREN meetings took place in 2024, 20 were specific NREN service review meetings and the remaining 130 covered topics including project contributions, the service portfolio, national support, and new opportunities, among other things.
Further engagement with our members comes via the CEO Track at TNC and through the series of CTO Workshops which guide the evolution of the network and the wider service portfolio. Whilst the network goes from strength to strength and our services are relied upon more every day, we will further strengthen and evolve the service portfolio in 2025, together with the members, so we continue to stay ahead of our community’s diverse and growing requirements.
More than ever, in a world under pressure due to several geopolitical events, we need to work as one community and be true to our values and purpose. The approach of consultation and collaboration is what delivered the successful 2021-2026 GÉANT strategy, and as we fast approach a new era in European research and education, 2025 will see the development of what could be considered the most important and impactful GÉANT strategy yet.
I’m truly excited by the opportunity to work with the GÉANT community and while this new era presents challenges, there are also opportunities for all of us, and I look forward to working with all of you to deliver on them.
This is a community with an incredibly strong sense of purpose.
The GÉANT Association is the collaboration of European NRENs (national research and education networks) delivering e-infrastructure and services to research and education. It comprises member NRENs and the GÉANT associates supported by the GÉANT organisation. The full list of Members, Associates & General Assembly representatives is available on the GÉANT website.
In June 2024, the citizens of the EU Member States voted for the new European Parliament. As the GÉANT organisation receives a large percentage of funding via EU funded projects, the outcome of the election process and the subsequent establishment of the new Commission College are of importance for our future. While there was pre-election concern about “Europe losing its middle”, the election results showed the continuation of the trend towards the far-right, but allowed for the mainstream and centrist pro-EU parties to hold the middle. Much quicker than expected by many, the European Council and European Parliament elected Ursula von der Leyen for another five years as European Commission President, choosing stability and continuity for the EU. The Commissioners’ College was presented by Ursula von der Leyen in September 2024 and approved in early 2025. In her address to Parliament in September 2024, she highlighted Democracy, Security and Prosperity as core priorities for the next five years.
While the European Parliament is elected every five years, the Multiannual Financial Framework is a seven-year programme. GÉANT receives its funding mainly in the current MFF through the 7-year FPA signed in the context of Horizon Europe. In 2024/25 we are in a situation in which the MFF enters its final implementation phase very much in parallel with a new Commissioner College setting new priorities. Applied to our own environment, this means that we see our ‘Big Five’ – GNx, EOSC, EuroHPC, International and Quantum – entering implementation and/or BAU phase and new priorities being added into the mix.
Democracy, Security, and Prosperity have emerged as new priorities with a particular focus on consolidating and enhancing Europe’s competitiveness in R&D. The priorities include heightened security safeguards; digital transformation including of the research and public sector; and an emphasis on the impact of research as the first step in the supply chain.
Even though the 2028-2035 MFF is currently being prepared behind closed doors, the new political priorities can be expected to boil down to have a tangible effect on the next budget, and how it will be distributed. We can expect an enhancement of policy conditionalities, an increasingly competitive funding environment, especially among direct beneficiaries for 100% EU financed actions, and further relegation to Member States.
Anticipating these changes, there is a need to be revising the Big Five into something that could be used in the future as a more strategic, anticipatory position. Geopolitical pressures, and subsequent strategic priorities will be followed by concrete policy. Identifying tangible successors for the ‘Big Five’ and positioning the organisation and community as a whole to whatever the future may bring is a valuable exercise and will feed into the strategy process GÉANT will enter into in 2025.
25 years ago, European lawmakers thought about creating a European Research Area (ERA) to make it possible for researchers, knowledge, and data to move freely around Europe. To make the single market for research a reality, the ERA Policy Agenda 2022-2024 set out (voluntary) actions in four areas.
A closer look at the successful GN5-1 project, which completed in 2024, shows just how well the project’s achievements correspond to the ERA Policy Agenda 2022-2024
Priority Area I
The project maintained the high-capacity, secure and cost-effective digital infrastructure European researchers need. The network and services support EOSC and Open Science, promote mobility across the ERA, help knowledge valorisation, and set Europe up for international cooperation. This is our bread and butter
Priority Area II
Through the enhanced digital capabilities of European research and education institutions, GN5-1 supported their transformation into hubs of green and digital innovation. The project holds space for making the network increasingly energy-efficient while ensuring robust protection. Europe needs players like GÉANT to foster the twin transition.
Priority Area III
The project contributed to the building up of regional and national R&I ecosystems beyond the European Union, where the engagement with the local NRENs helps extend the GÉANT Single Network. By expanding the base or researchers, GN5-1 broadened participation in the European Research Area. Digital inclusion happened through GN5-1.
Priority Area IV
While this priority area is more relevant for national governments, the structure of the GN5-1 project lent itself to coordinate and optimize investments into NRENs as national research stakeholders.
The GÉANT network and services provide the necessary infrastructure to move knowledge and
data cross-border. By default, the GÉANT Association is indispensable for the European Research Area.
The 24-month GN5-1 project, the first phase implementing the actions defined in the 72-month GN5 Framework Partnership Agreement established between the GÉANT Consortium and the European Commission in 2021, ended on 31 December and was seamlessly succeeded by GN5-2 which started on 1 January 2025.
The GÉANT Project has been running for almost 25 years, supporting Europe’s research and education communities, and with its 38 project partners (together with the GÉANT Association) representing all of Europe’s NRENs, it serves as an excellent example of pan-European collaboration. GN5-1 assembled over 600 contributors across 43 countries and the outputs of its nine work packages covers the majority of the GÉANT community’s activities.
The highlights of the project for 2024 are available here.
In 2024, the project focussed on transatlantic connectivity procurement and on charting the strategy for future intercontinental connectivity investments. The major milestone of the project – the launch of the tender for transatlantic connectivity – was achieved in October, with the objective to procure fibre spectrum on two diverse and resilient links to be owned by GÉANT and operated in synergy with ESnet, who in turn are making a similar investment over two transatlantic cable systems. The combined investments will allow for increased capacity, resilience and flexibility, supporting transatlantic R&E traffic for years to come.
In 2024, a no-cost extension was approved for the GÉANT grant agreement, extending the project to April 2025. Strong progress was made on connectivity in the UbuntuNet Alliance region, where the Ethiopian NREN was successfully connected to the regional backbone. In West and Central Africa, a procurement process was launched to extend connectivity to five more countries (Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Mauritania, Guinea, and Senegal). This progress has taken the total countries connected by April 2025 to eleven, exceeding the initial target of ten countries.
The €13 million EUMEDplus project started on 1 September, aiming to assure international connections for the North African and Eastern Mediterranean region including the delivery of Medusa, strengthen the sustainability of ASREN and the region’s NRENs, and increase service provisioning in the region along open science principles and alongside capacity and community-building activities. A project kick-off meeting was held with the attendance of the EC, alongside ASREN’s e-AGE conference in Tunis, Tunisia, in December. Monitoring of progress towards the delivery of Medusa connectivity continued, with the project remaining on schedule and the first links expected to become operational by the end of 2025.
With the initial target of implementing four connectivity IRUs in the region, focus turned to upgrading the spectrum link from Chisinau to Bucharest from 40Gbps to 100Gbps, with completion expected in February 2025. This is a major step forward in terms of ensuring the resiliency and preparedness for the future of a high-capacity infrastructure connecting Poznan, Kyiv, Chisinau and Bucharest. The number of connected institutions in the region has increased to 269 and an increased focus on service uptake has seen success with cloud services and eduroam in particular. The launch of the HPC centre in Armenia in May and the 25th anniversary of RENAM in October 2024 were significant events that demonstrated the evolution and growth of the EaP NRENs.
Le magnifique TNC24, the biggest TNC yet with 842 attendees – including 100 speakers – from 69 nations, took place in Rennes in June 2024 in close collaboration with host RENATER. It delivered a great week of plenaries, presentations, parallel sessions, side meetings, BoFs, Lightning Talks, community hub collaboration, morning run mingling, coffee break collaboration, dinner discussions, and perfect pastries!
The Community Hub – which was piloted at TNC23 – grew substantially in TNC24 and had its own parallel event programme. TNC is also a platform for the Emerging NREN Programme and Future Talent Programme, and these programmes are a great way to increase participation in TNC and continue to be very popular. The Future Talent Programme in particular helps to take TNC – and GÉANT – to highly engaged new audiences, and to attract new talent to the community.
Another integral part of TNC is the CEO Track, where we make the most of having CEOs from around the world in one place to discuss common challenges and potential solutions. TNC24 welcomed 53 NREN and RREN directors from the international community to this third session of its kind, which included a security bootcamp and a strategic discussion on the global REN, and a joint dinner with the General Assembly to facilitate human networking.
Charlie van Genuchten was elected as the new GÉANT Community Committee (GCC) Chair, and will lead the GCC for the next three years. Alongside this, four new Special Interest Groups were introduced into the refreshed thematic areas. These were SIG-AI, SIG-Sustainability, SIG-Procurement, and SIG-TFN (Time & Frequency Network).
“Enthusiasm, growth, challenge, fun, and friendship are what comes to mind when I think about working in the GÉANT community. It is an absolute honour to be part of this forward-looking family that aspires towards a bright and modern future for global Research and Education. I am beyond thankful for the mentorship, comradeship, and trust I received from my peers, and this award recognises that these are at the root of our community! The future of digital identity is happening now! It is exciting and full of amazing opportunities that we can shape and realise together to empower the new generations in academia”
Marina Adomeit, Trust and Identity Project Manager, SUNET
Marina Adomeit was awarded the 2024 GÉANT Community Award during TNC24. Marina was nominated for her leadership of Trust and Identity work in successive GÉANT Projects and extensive AAI support for international user communities including EuroHPC.
The GÉANT Community Award honours community members who have made outstanding contributions to collaborative work and the development of services and technologies, people who have shared their ideas, expertise and time with the community. GÉANT recognises that such contributions are often provided voluntarily and through the goodwill of employer organisations. Nominations come from across the entire global research and education networking community.
The Community Award is a sign of recognition for the individual efforts that make up our community collaborations, and is presented every year at TNC, the GÉANT community’s flagship conference.
The 2024 edition of the GÉANT Innovation Programme received a significant increase of interest, and six projects were successful with awards of up to €50,000 each. Of these, three came from countries represented for the first time, illustrating an increased geographic reach. The funded projects came from Georgia, UK, Italy, Greece, Croatia, and Spain, covering various categories including Cloud, Network, Security, Education, and Trust and Identity. Aligning with GÉANT’s Gender Equality Principles, four out of the six awarded projects were led by females.
“We have been extremely impressed by the dedication and enthusiasm displayed by FTP24 participants, especially in developing their Lightning Talk concepts. Thanks to their hard work, the quality of submissions was incredibly high, and a record number of FTP participants were selected to
present their ideas at TNC24. The FTP has once again discovered exceptional new talent in our community and given them a chance to showcase their innovative ideas.”
Lisa Melrose, Learning Programme Organiser
Throughout 2024, 38 events were carried out by GÉANT’s Learning and Development team. In total there were 458 participants, with 40 NRENs involved. The GÉANT Future Talent Programme (FTP) supported 17 talented individuals, with sponsorship from 10 different NRENs. FTP24 provided one-to-one training and coaching to support the participants to deliver impactful presentations. Nine participants were invited to attend TNC24 to deliver a five-minute Lightning Talk on stage.
The Navigating Change: Foresight 2030 report was published at the end of 2024 with the aim of looking into the future and defining the potential directions of the evolution of NRENs. There were two key outcomes of the foresight exercise: a framework to look into the future of NRENs, and the identification of the most important factors that may affect their evolution according to the experts involved.
“Foresight 2030 is a great example of what NRENs do best: collaborate for the benefit of the unique and crucial digital infrastructure which supports research and education and the benefit they bring to science and learning, communities and economies internationally. The report demonstrates the reach and significance of the technical expertise NRENs convene within and across nations for leading edge digital infrastructure supporting sustainable, resilient and innovative research and education. Without NRENs collaborating with each other, we would all be less able to benefit from international excellence in our sector.” Victoria Moody, Jisc, member of the NREN expert group
Whilst we cannot be certain of the future, the foresight approach helps us all to think about what may be coming and how we might adapt to best support the communities we serve.
The 2024 edition of the GÉANT Innovation Programme received a significant increase of interest, and six projects were successful with awards of up to $50,000 each. Of these, three came from countries represented for the first time, illustrating an increased geographic reach. The funded projects came from Georgia, UK, Italy, Greece, Croatia, and Spain, covering various categories including Cloud, Network, Security, Education, and Trust and Identity. Aligning with GÉANT’s Gender Equality Principles, four out of the six awarded projects were led by females.
In 2024, the GÉANT network carried more than 3.3 Exabytes of data, an average of 9.1 Petabytes every day, representing an annual increase of 9%. Following the procurement stage in the previous year, 2024 saw the start of the migration to our new Nokia platform that will conclude in 2025. This renewal will take 400Gbps network availability to the edges of Europe, with global partners able to connect at or near landing stations. Deployment of the Optical Line System has further reduced dependency on the market, increasing our capability to introduce emerging technologies and services (e.g. the new GÉANT Spectrum Service, QKD, and Time and Frequency distribution), and allows the use of third-party transponders/DCIs to cost-effectively add capacity and continue to support the emerging requirements of “Big Science” users.
Protecting this vital network and its users of course remains a priority, and the Security Operations Centre (SOC) made substantial progress in enhancing GÉANT’s security and service offerings, with upgraded solutions for NeMo-based DDoS detecting and mitigation; advanced DNS; and successful migration of management and telemetry interfaces to the new SNM platform.
Further improving the management of the network, GÉANT’s fully open-source automation platform (GAP) enabled migration of live IP backbone traffic to the new Nokia platform, which showcased the innovative approach to service delivery.
In June the GN5-IC1 Project delivered the first phase of GÉANT’s new Intercontinental Connectivity investment programme with the successful implementation of a new 100Gbps link between GÉANT and Singapore. The new route interconnects the GÉANT network in Marseilles to the SingAREN Open Exchange in Singapore, from where GÉANT plans to interconnect with its international partners in the region.
This also marks a fundamental step towards reinforcing GÉANT’s intercontinental connectivity with the Asia-Pacific region, an area that already accounts for nearly 20% of intercontinental traffic. The new capacity contributes to the capabilities of the expanded Asia-Pacific Europe Ring (AER) – the co-operative arrangement among leading-edge Research and Education Networks in Europe and in the Asia-Pacific region, to provide mutual back-up arrangements, improve network reliability and ensure greater network resilience.
The procurement stage for the renewal of the packet layer has been concluded, with the contract awarded to Nomios/Nokia. The design for Phase 2 provider router functionality was completed and a migration strategy developed. Hardware testing in the GÉANT testbed is ongoing and hardware has been installed in a number of PoPs across the GÉANT network to facilitate integration, management and migration tests.
GÉANT continues to make significant progress to enhance its security infrastructure. The Trusted Certificate Service was re-procured to offer participating NRENs access to cost-effective certificate issuance and management facilities. In 2024 the Vulnerability Management Service was launched as a collaboration with OutPost24. This service allows NRENs and Institutions to proactively scan network attached assets for cyber-vulnerabilities to avoid compromises.
GÉANT hosted a the first stand-alone Security Days event in 2024, providing a platform for knowledge exchange and awareness-building. The event hosted workshops across three days including topics such as Post-Quantum cryptography, AI and Cyber-awareness. The success of this event resulted in a larger event planned for 2025.
CLAW24 was held in Barcelona in December 2024.
Collaboration was a key theme in 2024. Infoshares and updates on a range of security topics were organised throughout the year with a resources hub created to enable sharing of best practice.
The GN5-1 Security Work Package (WP8) contributed to the 2024 Cybersecurity Month initiative focusing on Social Engineering which involved 23 NRENs and produced content translated into 7 languages.
The campaign generated high levels of visibility and engagement across a range of platforms and content types.
Together with Europe’s NRENs, the Association continues to support large pan-European research groups and in 2024 efforts were focused on:
The Association has continued to hold key roles in the EOSC Executive Board and remains in close contact with the EuroHPC governance.
After almost four years of preparation and the conducting of the EuroHPC Hyperconnectivity Study, the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking published an invitation to tender in December 2024.
GÉANT and our member NRENs have been following the developments in the EuroHPC environment closely since the inception in 2017. Between 2021 and the end of 2024, the community came together in 24 regular meetings on the topic in the EuroHPC NREN Coordination group. In addition to this, a team of engineers from GÉANT and the NRENs prepared the community through architectural and network solution considerations. In anticipation of the bid to be published, the GÉANT General Assembly decided in June 2024 to form the so-called ECHO group bringing together the NRENs hosting major points of interest for the EuroHPC community. In close collaboration with the Board and the newly created GÉANT bid team, the ECHO group steered the community through the complex waters of a hitherto unexplored procurement environment. The results of the tender are
expected to be announced during Q2/2025
2024 was the year in which EOSC matured from project-based planning to service delivery, moving towards federated operations. Already in November 2023 the EC announced the winners of the public procurement tender for “Managed Services for the European Open Science Cloud Platform (EOSC)”. The tender was based on three separate but interdependent lots, all of which are supported and/or led by a subset of Europe’s NRENs or key e-infrastructures, such as GÉANT, who jointly provide the EOSC Access Federation, Identity Hub and EOSC Exchange Infrastructure Proxy.
The public launch of the EOSC EU node subsequently took place during the EOSC Symposium in Berlin in October 2024 and created the gateway through which researchers can now:
In line with its mission to promote Open Science and accelerate its uptake, the EOSC EU Node is the first European-level node of the emerging EOSC Federation, which is envisioned to be a network of interconnected autonomous nodes, all operating under a common framework of standards, policies, and best practices. Therefore, the EOSC Tripartite commenced the process to identify Candidate EOSC Nodes in the summer of 2024. A questionnaire was issued with the purpose of gauging the overall level of interest of relevant parties to join the EOSC Federation during this build-up phase.
The response was overwhelming, with 121 organisations expressing an initial interest. Based on the selection criteria of maturity and diversity of resources, as well as inclusivity and representation of
research communities, the initial list was reduced and specific interviews were held with the remaining 29 applicants. By early 2025, 13 Candidate Nodes had moved forward into the build-up phase, of which three are members in the GÉANT Association.
In a parallel and complementary activity, the GÉANT Association member, SURF, demonstrated their Digital Research Environment during the GÉANT General Assembly in June 2024. In consequence, a subset of NRENs and GÉANT came together to jointly prove the concept of what is now referred to as the GÉANT Digital Research Environment. The multi-tenancy platform, hosted on SRAM (SURF Research Access Management), will allow researchers to access a variety of services via a shared portfolio management. The GÉANT DRE received initial community funding through the GÉANT Innovation Fund and is currently preparing to have a first Sunet Proof-of-Concept ready in 2025. The second priority is making the DRE interoperable with the EOSC EU node, potentially relevant to the setting up of national nodes in the emerging EOSC Federation. The Digital Research Environment is strategically positioned to apply to an INFRA EOSC call expected in the 2025 Research Infrastructures Work Programme.
In 2024 the use of the eduroam WiFi roaming service increased by over 12% compared to 2023 and registered a total of 8.4 billion national and international authentications, and NRENs around the world continue to expand access to eduroam in non-academic environments. eduroam is being rolled out to city locations and libraries in countries from Canada to South Africa. eduroam is now available in over 39,000 locations across more than 100 territories with over 10,000 institutions participating.
The eduGAIN interfederation service supports 78 federations and over 9,000 entities by the end of 2024 enabling access to an estimated 28 million users around the world to a range of research and education resources.
eduTEAMS enables members of the research and education community to create and manage virtual teams and securely access and share common resources and services using federated identities from eduGAIN and trusted Identity Providers.
MyAcademicID makes it possible for higher education students participating in the Erasmus+ programme to authenticate and access their Online Learning Agreement (OLA) and the Erasmus+ App in a safe and secure way. The MyAcademicID service has been pivotal in the rollout and support of the European Student Identifier (ESI). MyAcademicID has become an integral element of the AAI solution to the EuroHPC platform, where it will enable federated access to EuroHPC compute services.
The CoreAAI platform enabled access for more than 500,000 users of connected services. This was across 23 deployments in total, serving GÉANT community, e-science, HPC community, EOSC and student mobility. Development and implementation work is progressing on a range of advanced services (e.g. federated SSH solution and identity validation).
The activities of GÉANT and the NRENs are supportive of many of the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) but contribute significantly to three SDGs in particular: ensuring quality education (SDG 4) through services like eduroam and eduGAIN; fostering innovation (SDG 9) by connecting researchers across Europe; and forming global partnerships for sustainable development (SDG 17) through international projects and good governance practices.
In 2023, GÉANT moved further forward in alignment, actively baselining NREN involvement with the SDGs via surveys, and identified that a number of NRENs were currently working within the remit of 10 of the SDGs, highlighting an awareness of these areas of over 80%. This is a good starting figure.
The AfricaConnect3 project communications team, in collaboration with the wider African Research and Education community, has also compiled comprehensive evidence that Research and Education Networks (RENs) show excellent promise for making significant progress toward achieving several of the SDGs.
In 2024, GÉANT successfully launched and executed a pan-European procurement for the OCRE 2024 Framework, the most recent iteration of GÉANT’s flagship Cloud Frameworks, and carried out extensive preparations towards its start in February 2025.
As a result of the tender, GÉANT awarded 416 Framework agreements for the provision of commercial cloud services via the OCRE 2024 Framework. The previous OCRE 2020 Framework, also known as IaaS+, concluded in November 2024.
Throughout 2024, usage of the GÉANT Cloud Frameworks kept registering significant growth, with over 1,000 institutions across 28 countries actively consuming services via the framework, leading to a nearly 30% increase in yearly consumption.
Following a comprehensive process of consultations within the community, the GÉANT Community Strategy for Above-the-Net Services was finalised and published.
The Above-the-Net Services Incubator – a new initiative within the GÉANT GN5-1 project – awarded and supported the development of two innovative digital services: Language learning Intelligence for Students and Academic organisations (LISA) by ACOmarket via ACOnet, and Scalable JupyterHub for EOSC Enterprise File Sync and Share (EFSS) by SUNET.
The eduMEET videoconferencing platform announced a major update with the release of its Version 4, an entirely new and improved version, with re-built architecture and a series of innovative features. NREN interest in the eduMEET spin-out to an independent, community-financed open-source project kept growing, particularly in light of a future federated approach.
Throughout 2024, GÉANT’s Gender Equality Committee continued its work towards the Gender Equality Plan and specifically based on the 2024 Gender Equality Action Plan. The work focused on further raising awareness within the organisation and the community by providing a space for exchanging knowledge and ideas, establishing and endorsing the Gender Equality principles for the GÉANT Community, working with the GÉANT Board on improving gender balance on governance committees, and running a number of trainings for staff and the community, including supporting GÉANT’s Mentorship Programme. The Gender Equality Committee will continue its activities based on the 2025 Gender Equality Action Plan.
GÉANT continues to take sustainability seriously: following the publication of our 2024 CO2 report in 25/03, we have defined a high-level long-term roadmap to deliver our net zero target by 2035. Short-term priorities cover several workstreams looking at key areas, focusing for example on continuing to reduce kW/bit on the network, developing a Socially Responsible Purchasing framework, reducing the CO2 footprint of GÉANT offices, promoting sustainable commuting for our staff, and setting clear targets around business travel. We have adopted the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Protocol, a widely recognised framework for organisations to measure and manage their greenhouse gas emissions.
Attracting the right talent to the GÉANT community – and retaining that talent – is no simple task. Competing with commercial organisations on their own terms is a challenge. So, what does GÉANT do in this environment? We trade on our strengths – focusing our talent acquisition on people who want something different, who have a sense of purpose, and who want to contribute to positive change in the world.
Our people often ‘find their home’ at GÉANT, discovering a welcoming, multi-cultural, and highly flexible employer, a fascinating and extremely collaborative European community, an extended ‘family’ of colleagues, and above all else a great opportunity to both specialise in their work and expand their horizons. Our people work in a wide range of areas, including project management, finance, network engineering, procurement, trust and identity, partner relations, security, learning and development, communications, and much more. And they enjoy the opportunities provided by an extensive learning and development programme that really does expand horizons.
Our career development framework facilitates those staff who wish to move into other departments, as well as those who look for progression.
Our approach is working: in 2024 we welcomed 29 new joiners with a particular focus on early career stages (taking our diverse headcount to 171 people representing 42 different cultural backgrounds!). The average length of service across GÉANT is 6.5 years (with 39% having worked with GÉANT for over 10 years). And our annual employee engagement survey showed 83% of staff either extremely satisfied or satisfied.
So, whilst we are moving in the right direction, we are not complacent. We have an action plan for any areas that show room for improvement; our entire staff meets twice a month to discuss progress towards plans and to celebrate achievements; and our staff all-hands later in 2025 will help develop our next strategy.
Our 63/37% male/female split shows work is still to be done in this area and as part of that our annual Women in STEM campaigns aim to attract more women to our community, regardless of career stage or specialism. However, our commitment to equality goes beyond gender as we strive towards true diversity, equity, and inclusion.
GÉANT is Europe’s leading collaboration on network and related infrastructure and services for the benefit of research and education.
