Published date: 25 November 2015

This notice was replaced on 25 November 2015

This notice does not contain the most up-to-date information about this procurement. The most recent notice is:

Awarded contract (published 4 February 2022)

Closed opportunity - This means that the contract is currently closed. The buying department may be considering suppliers that have already applied, or no suitable offers were made.


Contract summary

Industry

  • Education and training services - 80000000

Location of contract

B15 2TT

Value of contract

£0

Procurement reference

SC3818

Published date

25 November 2015

Closing date

4 January 2016

Contract start date

1 March 2016

Contract end date

29 February 2020

Contract type

Service contract

Procedure type

Open procedure

Any interested supplier may submit a tender in response to an opportunity notice.

Contract is suitable for SMEs?

Yes

Contract is suitable for VCSEs?

No

Description

The University of Birmingham has established an integrated research environment known as BEAR (Birmingham Environment for Academic Research) as a set of interrelated services to support many aspects of the research workflow. This tender is to extend the existing research partnership, both by enhancing the existing services and potentially adding new services. We emphasise that this is not just, or even primarily, a hardware procurement.
The overall requirements are discussed in detail in the Specification of Requirement section and the full ITT. These can be summarised as:
• developing and strengthening the existing Research Computing partnership with a partner to expand the number and range of users of the service
• expanding the existing HPC cluster
• expanding the existing Research Data Archive and Research Data store, including the need to manage sensitive data such as patient data
• awareness of the national and international High Performance Computing landscape, including access to national and international HPC resources
Additionally, providing access to technical expertise and experience, which might be through specialist third-parties that the tenderer has a long-standing and close relationship with, in the following areas will be beneficial:
• applications services on Windows HPC service
• batch render farms
• remote and collaborative rendering
• application of cloud services to research

This project may be funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) or;
- European Structural and Investment Fund (ESIF) or;
- Research Councils UK (RCUK), the strategic partnership of the UK's seven Research Councils.

More information

Additional text

The University of Birmingham has established an integrated research environment known as BEAR (Birmingham Environment for Academic Research) as a set of interrelated services to support many aspects of the research workflow. This tender is to extend the existing research partnership, both by enhancing the existing services and potentially adding new services. We emphasise that this is not just, or even primarily, a hardware procurement.
The overall requirements are discussed in detail in the Specification of Requirement section and the full ITT. These can be summarised as:
• developing and strengthening the existing Research Computing partnership with a partner to expand the number and range of users of the service
• expanding the existing HPC cluster
• expanding the existing Research Data Archive and Research Data store, including the need to manage sensitive data such as patient data
• awareness of the national and international High Performance Computing landscape, including access to national and international HPC resources
Additionally, providing access to technical expertise and experience, which might be through specialist third-parties that the tenderer has a long-standing and close relationship with, in the following areas will be beneficial:
• applications services on Windows HPC service
• batch render farms
• remote and collaborative rendering
• application of cloud services to research

This project may be funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) or;
- European Structural and Investment Fund (ESIF) or;
- Research Councils UK (RCUK), the strategic partnership of the UK's seven Research Councils.

About the buyer

Contact name

Karen Stanwell

Address

University of Birmningham
Birmingham
B15 2TT
England

Email

k.m.stanwell@bham.ac.uk