The Met Office is launching an Early Market Engagement exercise to explore the options to replace the IBM supercomputer which currently underpins its operations.

Many of the services offered by the Met Office are supported by the computer which runs complex multi-model integrations and ensembles of integrations as well as research and development of these models.

The Met Office is currently planning for a replacement supercomputer be commissioned by 2015 to allow continued model and product enhancements.

The supercomputer is dependent on an archiving system of sufficient capacity and performance to allow the efficient storage of model output data. The current archiving system, known as MASS, will require a significant hardware upgrade to provide the required capacity and performance.

The Met Office is now seeking expressions of interest via the Open Procedure within the Official Journal of the European Union. This is the start of a period of Early Supplier Market Engagement that will enable the Met Office to get a full understanding of what the large data storage market can deliver to meet the Met Offices business objectives.

The Early Market Engagement period is expected to end with the release of an Invitation to Tender in November 2014 - interested suppliers must be in a position to fully engage with the Met Office during this period.

Interested suppliers should register company details on the Met Office eTendering portal at: http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/about-us/contracts. The outline requirement for the replacement MASS system is summarised within the “Met Office MASS System Supplier Briefing” document which will be made available from the portal.