Registration is open for ECMWF’s Industry Day on 16 January 2019 at CNR in Bologna, Italy. Potential suppliers are invited to find out more about upcoming tenders for equipment and services for the Centre’s new data centre.
Attendees will learn more about the Centre’s bespoke new data centre currently under construction in Bologna, expected to be ready for operational use by late 2020. It will be one of the biggest supercomputing facilities in Europe, running the complex models that produce weather forecasts for ECMWF’s Member and Co-operating States.
Essential infrastructure
Following the release of an invitation to tender (ITT) for ECMWF’s next HPCF, the Centre will be issuing tenders in early 2019 for the procurement of goods and installation services in the areas of cabling, racking, servers, disks and storage, network and ICT security, and electrical equipment.
“These are essential elements to have in place around the new supercomputers to ensure the 24/7 delivery of forecast services to ECMWF’s Member States,” says Matteo Dell’Acqua, technical lead of the data centre relocation programme and, from April 2019, Head of Data Centre Operations in Bologna.
Speaking at the site of the new data centre in November, ECMWF Council President Miguel Miranda said: “The new Bologna HPC centre is a major step on the way to push forward the limits of weather forecasting. It will provide the means to forecast better, faster and earlier.”
ECMWF in Bologna 2020: from the site of ECMWF's new data centre in Italy, ECMWF's Director-General and Council President explain the importance of increasing supercomputing capability in order to continue advancing weather science.
Industry Day on 16 January
The Industry Day will provide information about the development of ECMWF’s new data centre. Speakers will explain ECMWF’s procurement rules and processes and present the release schedule for the ITTs that will be issued in the first quarter of 2019.
Attendees will then hear more about ECMWF’s requirements in the areas of electrical and systems integration, network and ICT security, servers, and storage. There will also be further information regarding installation, configuration, testing and commissioning.
Full details about the agenda, location and how to register are available on the Industry Day page. Attendance is free; the registration deadline is 10 January 2019.
ECMWF’s data centre Industry Day is kindly hosted by ASTER.