The European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) is envisaged as a stakeholder-driven infrastructure servicing science and innovation. More than a data repository, it will comprise technical elements of connectivity, hardware, repositories, data formats and API’s and it will offer access to a wide range of user-oriented services, data-management, associated HPC analytics environments, stewardship services and, notably, expertise. The EOSC is envisaged as a publicly governed endeavor, but given the scale foreseen and the need for long-term sustainability, parts of it will be realized in collaboration with the industry. High performance analytics environments and services may or may not be part of the EOSC, but will largely develop on top of well-defined and stable EOSC APIs.