Met Office Seeks Resellers To Supply Weather-Forecasting Supercomputer

The Met Office has announced it is searching for a few resellers with the ability to supply it with the next generation of weather-forecasting technology.

A contract notice published by the Office last week states its intentions to move away from the current supplier IBM “before its scheduled end of life.”

According to the tender, the organisation is looking for around six resellers to provide a tech overhaul as part of a Supercomputer Enhancement project, in what will be a six-and-a-half year deal with the option to extend for another two.

It is expected to accumulate £75m in capital investment and an additional £30m in operational costs for the duration of the contract.

The Met Office has broken the migration process down into three steps and hopes these will be completed by 2016.

The first step of the phased installation will see the migration of production work away from the existing IBM 7 Power System before that contract is up, according the tender.

The second will follow the decommissioning of the previous system, removing some of the power and floor space constraints by the end of the first quarter of 2016, while the final phase would establish extra capacity off-site in a new IT hall by the end of that year.

“The Met Office is seeking a supplier to supply, deliver, install, commission, integrate and in conjunction with [us] facilitate the acceptance of all hardware and software,” says the contract notice.

“The successful supplier will provide training, documentation and appropriate support during the installation and commissioning phase.

“[It will] also provide support and maintenance for the system during its life of the contract following full acceptable in to operation service and will decommission and dispose of the system at the end of the contract,” it added.

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