Public procurement notice: Buyer Profile
Published: 2022-10-11
Buyer: European Space Agency (ESRIN)
Country: IT
Contract type: Services
CPV classification: 73000000

Technical requirements: This procurement is part of the European Commission DestinE initiative, that has the objective of developing and exploiting a highly accurate digital model of the Earth in order to monitor and predict the interaction between natural phenomena and human activities. This procurement aims at developing the platform serving as single access point to DestinE ecosystem. The specific scope of this activity is to setup, integrate, and operate an open ecosystem of essential services, of including platform and data management services,on the DestinE Core Service Platform (DESP). This will support DestinE-data exploitation and information sharing and form a coherent and open framework (DESP Framework) for the benefit of DestinE users and Third-Party entities. This procurement will be followed by a complementary procurement focusing on the implementation of DESP User Advanced Services.
This activity shall include the setup of the following key essential services: user identification, authentication, and authorization service; infrastructure as a service with storage, network, and CPU/GPU capabilities; data access and retrieval service, in particular from the DestinE Data Lake operated by EUMETSAT, as it is the backbone for DestinE-generated data storage; data traceability and harmonization services; basic software suite service for local data exploitation; data and software catalogue services; and 2D/3D data visualization service. This activity includes as well: the operations of DESP on a public cloud ecosystem and through future interfaces with the European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking; the support to DestinE system integration activities, interfacing with ECMWF and EUMETSAT; and support to the integration of DestinE use cases and partnerships.
The DESP Framework activity is funded under the DestinE initiative (EU-funded programme) and will be open exclusively to economic operators and organisations (including subcontractors) which have their registered office in an EU Member State or a State associated to the Digital Europe Programme in accordance with Articles 10 and 12 of the Digital Regulation. This initiative will support the European Commission to achieve the sustainable development objectives and will contribute to the European Green Deal and Digital Strategy.
The Invitation to Tender (ITT) package (Cover Letter, Special Conditions of Tender, Draft Contract, Letter of Invitation, and requirements documentation including the Statement of Work) will be available on ESA Star Publication website (https://esastar-publication.sso.esa.int/), the ESA tendering website. Any Tenderer which is not yet registered with ESA as a potential supplier must complete the online questionnaire in esa-star: https://esastar-emr.sso.esa.int/. Further information on the registration process can be found on the Doing Business with ESA portal: https://doing-business.sso.esa.int/. Please, note that esa-star allows two levels of entity registration: "Light" and "Valid Full". This allows new users wishing to do business with ESA to carry out their registration in two steps. While "Light" registration will grant access to all esa-star services up to and including proposal submission, the award of ESA contracts requires "Valid Full" status. The issue of the Invitation to Tender is foreseen in November 2022. ESA intends to place one (1) contract as a result of this procurement for a duration of 18 months, with the intention of extending the contract to cover DestinE continuation into the future.