Partnership for the Provision and Development of Research Computing Technology

The procurement is for a new partnership agreement, to succeed the current contract 'THE PROVISION OF RESEARCH TECHNOLOGY PARTNERSHIP AND SOLUTIONS' SC/3818/15. Since 2015, it has supported the evolution and success of the Birmingham Environment for Academic Research (BEAR); its High Performance Computing (HPC) capability as well as other major research computing initiatives, including the EPSRC funded Tier2, accelerated compute facility, Baskerville and the MRC funded CLIMB cloud. The new technology partnership will underpin the University's ambitious goals, encapsulated in 'Birmingham 2030' and the role of HPC for computational science in achieving those goals. We are looking for a partner to bring expertise and industry insight in the drive to exploit the latest technologies to build high performance, sustainable and reliable services. As such, the partner must be able to deliver added value across our broad spectrum of activity in addition to the basic supply of high-performance infrastructure and services. It is anticipated that due to the investment required on both sides of this partnership, that this non-exclusive framework will be for 4 years, with an option to extend for a further 2 years + 2 years. The spend is estimated at £25,000,000. This would be distributed unevenly throughout the course of the contract. For background to the current operation, see bear.bham.ac.uk