OCF steps into UCLan's HPC gap

Specialist VAR wins deal to help university develop its high-performance computing system

High-performance computing (HPC) specialist OCF has nabbed a contract to provide cluster management support services for the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan).

The contract, for an undisclosed sum, will see OCF provide UCLan with strategic counsel and development of its HPC system and plug a recruitment gap where the university was struggling to recruit the right skills in-house.

UCLan’s shared HPC system was originally built by OCF in April 2010 and is used by a multi-disciplinary team of in-house scientists who can access the system via local work stations.

The university is in the process of making the HPC system available across its various other departments.

Graham Lee, head of IT infrastructure management at UCLan, said: “OCF responded quickly to a situation whereby our previous HPC manager moved on, leaving us with a gap in knowledge and skills to manage the HPC system.

“OCF initially provided an immediate system review and set in place clear SLAs with favourable response times for any service or incident calls. The OCF team now works in collaboration with our in-house IT team and the HPC system can be remotely managed and is presently returning 98 per cent availability of service.”

Julian Fielden, managing director of OCF, said: “It Is evident that the shortage of HPC expertise in the market can cause difficult situations for our customers, and we are pleased that we were able to help UCLan and will ensure going forward that our support services continue to deliver a high level of maintenance and advice.

"It can sometimes be more beneficial for our customers to use our remote service for cluster management to plug the gap in HPC skills, whether in the education market or corporate sector.”