Computer-related management services

Tender description

Details can be found in section II.2.4) Description of the procurement. The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council manages the ARCHER supercomputer service on behalf of the high performance computing (HPC) scientific user communities. This multi-million pound investment, which commenced service in 2013, provides national capability for scientific research across the HEI sector requiring access to high performance computing resources. Supporting a community of academic researchers across the UK, ARCHER provides a prestigious national Tier 1 compute resource for scientific endeavour. As provider of the national HPC service supporting researchers in diverse scientific fields, EPSRC currently manages the provision and support of the ARCHER service. A future capital investment will secure the next generation of HPC service and ensure provision of new HPC architecture capable of addressing the demands of increasing complexity in scientific research. The overall vision for ARCHER2 is to build on the existing Tier 1 and Tier 2 investments in national HPC facilities so that the UK is a recognised leader on the international scene for computational science and engineering. In order to achieve this, UK researchers must be able to carry out internationally competitive research across the remits of EPSRC, NERC and beyond. The benefits of the UK being world leading in computational science and engineering will be realised through: — the enhanced reputation of the UK in science and engineering as a whole; — the increased ability of UK researchers to make valuable contributions to the solution of complex scientific challenges and to the generation of quality scientific outputs; — increased attractiveness of UK researchers as partners in high profile international collaborations and improved access to large HPC resources in other countries. EPSRC, as managing agent for the national HPC facility on behalf of the other Research Councils, is looking to tender contracts for three elements of the ARCHER facility in 2018: the hardware (based in Edinburgh), the service provision which manages academic access to the facility and the helpdesk, and the computational science and engineering (CSE) support which provides training and support to users of the facility to enable their codes to run as effectively as possible. The Service Provider will act to co-ordinate and interface with the elements of the ARCHER2 service such that there is a full extent of agreed co-operation and delimitation of responsibilities to provide the highest quality service to the user communities. The main role of the Service Provider is to deploy, configure, maintain and upgrade the system software, system administration tools and user environments as they are made available. Such activities must be in full partnership, co-operation and collaboration with the Hardware Provider and any other parties directly impacted by those activities. The ARCHER service provider will be responsible for: — Integration with technology (in conjunction with the CSE and hardware support); — Front line service and user engagement (via a help desk); — Service availability and reliability; — Scheduling and allocation of resources; — User registration and access. The Service Provider may be required to assume some interface responsibilities in relation to the hardware and/or CSE support contractors. Some aspects of the service provision will be based near Edinburgh. Procurement is provisionally estimated to commence in February 2018 with issue of a contract notice. If you are interested in receiving further information regarding this requirement please provide contact details, company name and nature of interest to the contract point detailed in section I (I.1) Please reference ‘PR17126 Archer 2 — SP’ in your initial contact email.