Refreshing ARDC’s Nectar Research Cloud

The ARDC’s Nectar Research Cloud provides flexible and scalable computing power to all Australian researchers, with computing infrastructure, software and services that allow the research community to store, access and analyse data, remotely, rapidly and autonomously. Its self-service infrastructure allows fast, efficient desktop access to data and compute resources and a powerful platform for collaboration.

A significant proportion of the our research cloud has reached the end of its useful life and is due for replacement and in 2018 the Australian Government provided funding to support the continued delivery of compute resources to the research sector. The ARDC is refreshing cloud compute and storage infrastructure to maintain the capacity required to meet the demand for cloud resources from nationally prioritised research activities. We are requesting proposals from organisations currently providing resources into ARDC's Nectar Research Cloud, as well as other organisations with established capability in hosting significant ICT infrastructure, for the supply and operation of new research cloud infrastructure as part of the ARDC’s Storage and Compute program.

Outcomes of RFP announced

The RFP phase has closed, and the outcomes have been announced.

Our investment of $4.1 million is split across four Australian organisations - The University of Melbourne, Monash University, The Tasmanian Partnership for Advanced Computing and Intersect Australia.