CSCS commissions Meanquest to supply magnetic tapes

Meanquest has won a tender from the CSCS for a new Tape Library System. The Swiss National Supercomputing Center based in Lugano in the canton of Ticino has now awarded the relevant contract, worth 18 million Swiss francs over a period of five years, for this project. The contract also includes an option for an extension of an additional five years. In addition to the delivery of the magnetic tapes for data storage, the order also includes the cabling of the components with the storage network (SAN) and the migration and disposal of the existing tape library.

Meanquest beat off competition from another firm to win the contract for this project, further details of which can be found in a press release issued by Inside IT, a Swiss online IT magazine. The company, which is headquartered in Ecublens in the canton of Vaud, was formed from MTF Quadra. As the only Swiss-German company in the MTF Group, MTF Quadra rejected a takeover bid from Swisscom in December 2021. The IT service provider, which has 110 employees, therefore remained independent and has been operating under the name Meanquest ever since.

Established at the start of the 1990s in Lugano, the CSCS is operated by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH). It delivers supercomputing capabilities for research, industry and business.

The article cites the tender, according to which the existing IBM tape library has a storage capacity of around 50 petabytes and a remaining capacity of around 20 petabytes. In order to meet the increasing demands of the CSCS in terms of capacity and bandwidth, additional investments are therefore required.