SME involvement as a bridge between science and industry
The EOSC Federation is now operational, giving researchers across Europe access to shared data, services, computing power and expertise. Trust-IT Services, an SME and member of the EOSC Association, is playing a direct role. The company is contributing to two of the 14 Nodes announced as part of the launch, bringing service management expertise and a customer-focused approach to the initiative.
8 October 2026 — Today two Nodes in which Trust-IT is a partner have entered production as part of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) Federation, ready to deliver services and resources to researchers across Europe. One is the EOSC Node European Digital Twin Ocean, the operational evolution of the Blue-Cloud European Commission funded project that will become the Open Science and research component of the European Digital Twin of the Ocean (EDITO). The second is EUDAT, which operates the B2Service suite, a set of services supporting research data management, and contributes to the EOSC interoperability framework and cross-node scientific workflows. As of today, their resources can be discovered and used alongside complementary capabilities provided by other EOSC Nodes of the EOSC Federation across Europe.
The EOSC Node European DTO
Coordinated by CNR, the EOSC Node European Digital Twin Ocean is the operational evolution of the Blue-Cloud project that de facto piloted a Marine thematic Node, established during the EOSC Federation Build-Up Phase. Through the EOSC-Marine project, the Node evolves into a fully operational thematic node of the EOSC Federation while becoming the Open Science and research component of the European Digital Twin of the Ocean (EU DTO) ecosystem, implemented through the European Digital Twin Ocean Platform (EDITO). The EOSC Node European DTO establishes the strategic connection between the EOSC Federation and the European DTO, enabling scientific knowledge, FAIR data, analytical methods and digital services developed by the research community to flow towards operational Digital Twin services, while allowing operational marine data, services and computational capabilities from the DTO ecosystem to be exploited within collaborative Open Science environments. In this role, the Node acts as the interoperable interface between research and operations, contributing to the long-term convergence of EOSC and the European Digital Twin of the Ocean.
Trust-IT acts as Communication Officer for the EOSC Node European DTO, and also serves as Project Manager of the EOSC-Marine Horizon Europe project which has been funded to support 26 partners working in operationalising the EOSC Node European DTO.
The EUDAT Node
The EUDAT Node contributes directly to the EOSC Federation by complementing the offering of the other nodes with generic, integrated data management services. The EUDAT workspace brings together the EUDAT services suite, federated through a common AAI (B2ACCESS) that complies with the AARC Blueprint and is compatible with the EOSC Federation AAI. EUDAT also operates a monitoring service fully compatible with EOSC EU Node Monitoring, which tracks service performance and availability. The workspace is supported by a federation of resources (data storage, data archiving and connection to compute) that draws on EOSC's federating capabilities. It is designed to onboard complementary services from EUDAT members and other nodes that help make datasets FAIR and support scientific workflows, accelerating scientific discovery in Europe.
Trust-IT is one of the 23 EUDAT active members and has been for nearly 15 years back when it was an EU funded project. As Technical Architect of the EUDAT Node, Trust-IT designed and developed the EUDAT Node platform. The platform includes:
- a service catalogue.
- self-service ordering.
- management of research groups and organisations.
- a credit-based resource allocation model.
- An AI-powered assistant, grounded in the Node's own catalogue, guides researchers towards the services that best fit their needs.
Trust-IT also serves as EUDAT Outreach Coordinator and is an active member of the EUDAT Secretariat.
Why is EOSC important for SMEs?
Trust-IT, as an SME, believes in EOSC as we are convinced that having nimble organisations such as ours involved in the operational process can ensure EOSC is more connected to the market, turning Europe’s open science infrastructure into a driver of innovation, sovereignty and competitiveness.
A growing European research capability
EOSC embodies an important European approach to research-data governance designed to counter global pressures on European data sovereignty. This is achieved through distributed ownership, institutional autonomy, interoperability and cooperation under shared rules.
“The EOSC Nodes entering operations are the first vertebrae of the digital backbone that will support Europe’s capacity to connect and govern its own scientific data, to bring that data securely to compute and AI, and to turn it into a new generation of scientific discoveries,” said Klaus Tochtermann, president of the EOSC Association, in an article published today on Science | Business Magazine. “In a data-driven world, the capabilities the EOSC Federation supports are fundamental to Europe’s scientific leadership, competitiveness, and sovereignty.”
The EOSC Federation will mark the entrance into its operational phase at the EOSC Symposium 2026 in Florence on 14–16 October. The EOSC EU Node and the Federation’s 27 national, thematic and e-infrastructure Nodes, supported by 218 European research organisations, are creating a distributed European research environment in which data, services and computing resources can be used across institutional, disciplinary and national boundaries.
Come and meet us at the EOSC Symposium 2026
Where to find us:
On stage: 15 October, session “EOSC Federation Nodes in production: Lessons learnt and next steps”, 09:50 Talks from EOSC nodes part of the build-up phase: EUDAT EOSC Node. Talk by Alessandro Petrocelli, Chief Technical Officer, Trust-IT Services & COMMpla (see full programme).
Exhibition area and all around: EOSC Node | European DTO and EOSC-Marine , EOSC Node | EUDAT and EOSC EDEN and FIDELIS stands. Silvana Muscella, CEO, Sara Pittonet Gaiarin, Senior Manager, Alessanro Petrocelli, Chief Technology Officer, Sara Bozzi, Communication, Dissemination & Outreach Specialist.
Video area: Matteo Zoppi, Andrea Greco will be carrying out interviews with the Second Wave Nodes
