The Blue-Cloud VRE nowadays offers marine research communities a tailored virtual laboratory equipped with a comprehensive suite of data analytics tools, including Jupyter-based notebooks, RStudio environments, Galaxy, and a scalable cloud computing platform. These analytics solutions can be customised regarding computing power, storage capacity, pre-installed software libraries, and integrated data spaces. By seamlessly integrating these tools within the virtual research environment, the service fosters collaboration and accelerates the adoption of open science practices. Researchers can share analytical methods, reproduce research findings, and publish complete experimental setups, ensuring transparency and reproducibility in marine science. Data sharing is a core function, with a substantial amount of data exchanged, including peaks reaching 10 TB in a single month, illustrating the platform's capacity for handling large datasets. Furthermore, the high number of working sessions, averaging 2,870 per month and peaking at over 5,450, underscores the community's active engagement.
Blue-Cloud work towards optimisation of the web services and content of marine Research Infrastructures (RIs) has also progressed considerably over the course of 2024. The federation of BDIs as part of the Data Discovery & Access Service has been expanded with the following RIs: EMSO, ELIXIR-MGnify, SIOS, and EMODnet Physics, bringing the total number of federated BDIs at 13. The DD&AS provides an internal data gateway on the Blue-Cloud VRE which makes an easy and efficient data provision for users of Blue-Cloud VLabs and WorkBenches. In addition, great progress is being made with optimising content and streamlining web services, including semantic interoperability, supported by controlled vocabularies, for several of the 13 federated BDIs. In addition, it will facilitate later uptake of selected RIs as part of EMODnet, namely those which are not yet connected. ICOS-Marine, SIOS, SOCAT, ELIXIR-ENA and MGnify are potential candidates. The internal data provision has been expanded with the configuration and deployment of multiple data lakes set up for data collections from selected BDIs and also the international World Ocean Database (WOD) to provide powerful data sub-setting and slicing functionality, which is very useful for VLabs and the WorkBenches next to the services of the DD&AS.
