The volume and velocity of data produced by the SKA telescopes present significant challenges in making the SKA Observatory’s data products available to our scientific community, and enabling them to make new discoveries. Here we will present a high-level roadmap for the global network of SKA Regional Centres (SRCs); a global data centre network that will enable astronomers to turn SKA data into science.

As the SKA construction progresses, a phased roll out of antennas and dishes will allow for early testing of the data processing and observatory monitoring software and hardware systems. We plan to align the SRC Network (SRCNet) software development roadmap to these phases, since early science verification will provide the best way to test that the components of the SRCNet are up to the task.

The selection and development of the SRCNet software modules themselves are driven by the capabilities this global entity will require. In particular, the SRCs must be able to manage an exascale data archive in a fault-tolerant way. We wish to maintain the integrity of this archive by distributing it across the SRCs globally, whilst also being efficient with the total data footprint and transfer volume. Additionally, presenting a uniform, high quality user experience for astronomers to view and process their data, regardless of their geographic location, means we seek to build on cloud native technologies used by industry and other big science projects to fulfil these purposes.

By the start of science verification (Q1 2026) we are set to deliver our SRCNet v0.2 milestone, capable of supporting the needs of initial science verification. To achieve this, we will require a global ‘team of teams’ of software engineers and data/operations scientists to deliver on our collective vision.