Interviews and early feedback have shown, that users want to be able to implement their own applications and execute them, without having to worry about the underlying layers of infrastructure and network. A central login via a self-service user portal should enable overview and management of each users access to various services. Furthermore this portal will offer integrated and pre-configured tooling to create applications, expand them or access existing ones without having to install anything on their own PC, and thus helps to save valuable time. The portal is connected to the respective back-end via a standardised interface. The Back-End can either be the respective high-performance cluster or other computer resources that the respective universities have available. The data is held by the respective university, but can be easily shared with other universities via specific access rights, if required. The planned solution will not be a centrally managed infrastructure, but rather universities will be able to provide it themselves as needed via a simple application interface. This approach is called IaC – infrastructure as code. This makes it easy for users to work independently and not be dependent on a few experts. Users still don’t have to worry about the underlying architecture. The federated data management makes it possible to keep control over the data and at the same time have the possibility to share it with other universities and computing resources in a simple and user-friendly way.

The following graphic shows the various envisioned components.

During the project, each product or service was tested and rolled out in three phases. Each phase had a different target group that could use the product provided after the respective phase. In the first phase, project team members from the various partner universities were able to use the product. In the second phase, this user group was expanded to include so-called "friendly users," who were selected experienced users. In the third and final phase of this project, this user group was expanded to include selected actual end users. An Austria-wide roll-out (known as productive operation) was only planned at the end of the project.

The following diagram illustrates this more clearly.

The aim of the project was to develop and set up a cross-university computer cloud, a networked system of computers that offers students and teachers standardised access to data and computer resources, including high-performance computers. The system is designed to enable both digitalised teaching and research.

As part of the project, in addition to the joint development of this platform by individual partner universities, further components were developed that can and should be integrated into an overall system:

• Next Generation Repository for research data
• CyVerse installation with automatic deployment
• Monitoring of storage solutions
• Jupyter with Kubernetes
• Precautions for working with health data
• OpenStack-based software for HPC

The Open Science Labs developed as part of the project also serve as the basis for the software stack within the MUSICA project (Multi-Site Computing Austria), making the results from the ADLS project available to all universities in cooperation with Austria Scientific Computing (ASC).
Particularly noteworthy is the great success of the security audit, which was repeated with the relevant system components in preparation for the transfer to MUSICA, as well as its repeated productive use in a course.
Furthermore, the "Austrian Open Cloud Community" was founded in January 2023 and currently has 44 members.

Another result is a realistic assessment of the effort required to develop and operate such a cloud infrastructure. This effort was significantly underestimated at the start of the project. For the comprehensive rollout of such a solution at Austrian universities, a cross-university structure comparable to ACOnet or ASC would therefore be worth considering.