Sparkle and Xebia, the Netherlands-headquartered AI-first digital transformation company, have confirmed a joint agreement to accelerate AWS cloud adoption across nine European markets: Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.
Sparkle holds the highest-ranked position for AWS services under the OCRE 2024 Framework- a five-year EU-compliant cloud procurement scheme administered by GÉANT and active from February 2025 through 2030, covering over 25,000 eligible research, education and public-sector organisations across 39 countries. That ranking matters because under OCRE, eligible institutions can access AWS directly without the need for complex public procurement or competitive tenders. The administrative hurdle, historically one of the biggest blockers to cloud adoption in the public research sector, is effectively removed.
Gaining access to cloud services and building production-ready, compliant infrastructure are two very different things, and many universities and research organisations have found themselves stranded somewhere in between.
“Research and education institutions are under pressure to modernise, 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, modernising research infrastructure, or supporting high-performance computing workloads.”
Bridging access and execution
Xebia brings the technical depth to turn Sparkle’s procurement position into live infrastructure. Its services span cloud architecture and strategy, compliant landing zone design, high-performance computing, data platforms, AI and machine learning, and ongoing managed cloud services. The combined offer is positioned as a single point of entry, removing the need for institutions to manage separate relationships for procurement and delivery.
Annalisa Bonatti, vice president of Enterprise at Sparkle, commented on the partnership: “We are pleased to partner with Xebia to help institutions transform cloud access into tangible outcomes,” she said.
“Xebia’s AWS expertise further strengthens our ability to support universities and research organisations in adopting cloud technologies for AI, data, high-performance computing, and modern digital infrastructure.”
With demand for AI applications driving performance requirements higher, cloud technologies have become more important than ever to the research and education community, but purchasing and implementing those services remains a complex process for many institutions. Sparkle’s position within OCRE is not new, the operator has been selected by GÉANT for cloud framework participation three times in a row, but the Xebia partnership represents the most direct attempt yet to solve the last-mile delivery problem.
Sparkle has expanded its infrastructure footprint extensively in recent months, which includes the extension of the GreenMed subsea cable system into Jordan, opening a new Europe-Asia digital corridor, and the launch of STLS-AI, a patent-pending quantum-safe security framework designed to protect communication between AI agents, announced at the Global NaaS Event in Dallas. A memorandum of understanding with Entel Bolivia, signed at ITW, outlined plans for a high-capacity bio-oceanic digital corridor designed for the AI and cloud era.
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