01 December 2022     

CTS Partners with Sparkle to accelerate cloud adoption in the Dutch research and education sector

Three-year agreement to provide Google Cloud and professional services to research institutions in the Netherlands

 

Utrecht, 1 December 2022

CTS, one of Europe’s largest dedicated Google Cloud Partners, announces cooperation with Sparkle, the first international service provider in Italy and among the top global operators, to accelerate cloud adoption in the Dutch research and education sector. 

The collaboration between CTS and Sparkle takes place within the Open Clouds for Research Environments (OCRE). This is an initiative aiming to accelerate the digitisation of European universities and research centres through the adoption of cloud systems. 

Under the agreement, Sparkle will offer Google Cloud services in the Netherlands through SURF, a partnership of Dutch universities, colleges, university medical centres, research institutes and secondary vocational education institutions that jointly invest in high-quality ICT infrastructure and innovation. CTS will provide professional, consulting and system integration services to support R&E institutions throughout their cloud journey.

The partnership between CTS and Sparkle has been agreed for the next three years and the first talks with potential customers are underway. CTS brings the knowledge of Google Cloud experts while Sparkle is the official cloud framework provider and Google Cloud integrator in 27 European countries. The two companies will work together in supplying customers sourced from both companies. 

Marcel Stolk, Country Manager Netherlands at CTS: "We are very happy with the partnership with Sparkle, as it allows us to introduce research institutions to the benefits of Google Cloud. Traditionally, they would choose Amazon or Microsoft, but Google Cloud is ideally suited for these companies because it is incredibly strong in interpreting, analysing, visualising and securing data.” He continues, “We facilitate the transition to Google Cloud to perfection, so that these organisations can immediately start working with all the data they own. This partnership also lets us help organisations that started using Google Cloud themselves during the pandemic but have not yet been able to set it up properly due to lack of time and knowledge. We’re looking forward to helping these research institutions do great things with Google Cloud.

Annalisa Bonatti, EVP Enterprise at Telecom Italia Sparkle: “We are delighted to partner with CTS. By bringing together our respective expertise in cloud and digital services, we aim to reduce the cost and complexity of the transition to the cloud as we have already done in other leading European universities and institutions".