Sparkle, the first international service provider in Italy and among the top global operators, and Xebia, a global AI-first digital transformation and engineering company based in the Netherlands, has announced their partnership designed to help research and education (R&E) institutions accelerate their adoption of AWS cloud services and unlock greater value from digital innovation initiatives.
Sparkle holds the highest-ranked position for AWS services under the OCRE 2024 Framework, a cloud procurement framework managed by GÉANT, the pan-European network and service provider for R&E. The framework provides eligible institutions (universities, research centers, education providers, public-sector organizations and non-profits across 39 countries) with pre-tendered access to cloud services, thus removing administrative procurement complexity, and offering a fast and cost-effective path to cloud service adoption.
By partnering with Xebia, Sparkle closes the gap between access and execution, offering a single entry point for organizations seeking to move beyond experimentation and build a scalable, secure cloud infrastructure. Xebia, in fact, brings implementation expertise, helping institutions translate cloud availability into production-ready AWS environments. Its services span cloud strategy and architecture, compliant landing zones, AI and machine learning, high-performance computing (HPC), data platforms, and managed cloud services.
The agreement covers Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, where the two companies will jointly support eligible research and education institutions in their cloud transformation initiatives.
“Sparkle is committed to helping the European research and education community access cloud services through a secure, compliant, and cost-effective model,” said Annalisa Bonatti, Vice President Enterprise at Sparkle. “We are pleased to partner with Xebia to help institutions transform cloud access into tangible outcomes. Xebia’s AWS expertise further strengthens our ability to support universities and research organizations in adopting cloud technologies for AI, data, high-performance computing, and modern digital infrastructure.
“Research and education institutions are under pressure to modernize, but many still face practical barriers when moving from cloud experiments to scalable, secure environments,” said Bart Verlaat, Managing Director Xebia Cloud Benelux. “Together with Sparkle, we can help institutions move faster from ambition to implementation – whether that means building compliant AWS landing zones, enabling AI and machine learning use cases, modernizing research infrastructure, or supporting high-performance computing workloads.”
The announcement was made on the sidelines of TNC26, the largest and most prestigious R&E networking conference, organized by GÉANT and hosted this year in Helsinki by CSC, the National Research and Education Network of Finland.
