IT services: consulting, software development, Internet and support

Tender description

ECMWF is issuing an Invitation to Pre-Qualify (ItPQ) to help it plan a blended in-source and out-source strategy for the procurement, implementation and operation of a production quality, general-purpose, on-premises cloud-computing-environment (the ‘Cloud Strategy’). In summary, the purpose of the ItPQ is to: — state ECMWF’s requirements; — solicit responses from the widest possible range of potential suppliers who are able to meet those requirements; and — use those responses to draw up a shortlist of potential suppliers who will be invited to tender for the planned follow-up Invitation to Tender (ITT) for the implementation phase of the project. ECMWF, and their partners, hold an ever-growing data store for meteorological applications and so they have started the pilot phase of the ‘European Weather Cloud’ to make it easier to work on weather and climate big-data in a cloud-based infrastructure. The pilot phase of such endeavours to develop a set of terms and conditions for operation and use of such an infrastructure. ECMWF is issuing an Invitation to Pre-Qualify (ItPQ) to help it plan a blended in-source and out-source strategy for the procurement, implementation and operation of a production quality, general-purpose, on-premises cloud-computing-environment (the ‘Cloud Strategy’). In summary, the purpose of the ItPQ is to: — state ECMWF’s requirements; — solicit responses from the widest possible range of potential suppliers who are able to meet those requirements; and — use those responses to draw up a shortlist of potential suppliers who will be invited to tender for the planned follow-up Invitation to Tender (ITT) for the implementation phase of the project. In the first instance, this environment will support the production of the new ‘European Weather Cloud’. It is probable that other production systems will, in due course, be added, increasing demand, and resulting in significant scale-up requirements, and further enhanced resilience requirements. This ItPQ describes some of those other existing production systems. Others are in the planning stage between ECMWF and its partners. Once the ‘Cloud Strategy’ is defined, ECMWF hopes to issue one or more Invitations to Tender (ITTs) during the second half of 2021; these will be for the out-source components. First systems deployments in ECMWF’s new twin data-hall Bologna Data Centre are planned to take place during the Q2 2022. ECMWF encourages responders to submit complete responses to this ItPQ, including enhanced responses where invited to do so in the document. At this stage, we envisage a financial commitment in excess of EUR 1 million per annum, for an initial contract period of between 3 and 5 years and the possibility of annual extensions, however this does not include consolidation of other ECMWF systems, as mentioned above, which would inflate this figure.