TECNALIA launches three disruptive platforms to accelerate the digital transformation of companies

These unique infrastructures combine a Supercomputing Centre, a Data Lab and a private Cloud, to tackle digital projects in any field and in a comprehensive manner.

For their development, they have collaborated with international leaders in the digitisation of business networks Arista, Dell, Nvidia and Red Hat.

The platforms are located in TECNALIA’s facilities and are currently developing more than 100 projects for more than 60 companies.

The applied research and technological development centre TECNALIA, together with the international leaders in business network digitisation Arista, Dell, Nvidia and Red Hat, are launching KATEA, pioneering platforms for the digital transformation of companies. These unique digital infrastructures combine a supercomputing centre, a Data Lab and a private cloud to tackle digital projects in any field and in a comprehensive manner.

Located at TECNALIA’s facilities in the three Basque provinces, these platforms are currently developing more than 100 applied research projects for more than 60 companies.

In the words of their manager, Aitzol Zubizarreta, “we have created these platforms with the aim of anticipating the needs of companies and providing them with cutting-edge infrastructures for the execution of their projects. In this way, we facilitate the path towards innovation and digital transformation, and help them to execute their projects in a secure and accelerated environment, which allows them to be more competitive in the market”.

Open innovation

With an investment of more than 3 million euros, TECNALIA’s technological platforms are aimed at facilitating open innovation and effective collaboration with allies and research agents. Their creation has been made possible thanks to the collaboration of international leaders in the digitisation of business networks: Arista, Dell, Nvidia and Red Hat.

Dell has provided the hardware that supports these infrastructures; Nvidia’s hardware, market leader in High Performance Computing environments, improves the speed and efficiency of complex calculations, which is essential for scientific research and technological innovation; Red Hat’s software is the basis of the platforms; and Arista is the manufacturer of TECNALIA’s network infrastructure, which includes the networks that interconnect the platforms. In collaboration with the different manufacturers, Econocom, Teknei and NTT have participated as integrators of the technological solutions that make up the new platforms.

Pioneering technological platforms

TECNALIA’s technological platforms combine three laboratories as links: Research Cloud, Data Lab and Compute Platform.

Firstly, the Research Cloud is a private cloud built on the technological foundations of Red Hat. This technology allows TECNALIA to generate customised digital ecosystems for each project and company, so that they have a 360º vision of all the components at all times. The platform is consumed in IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) format, through which TECNALIA can offer infrastructure to its clients. The capabilities range from the deployment and management of virtual machines, networks and storage, to the implementation of applications for the business environment, in a more secure and flexible environment, thanks to the implementation of technological solutions offered by Red Hat platforms.

Alberto Torres Moreno, Business Development Manager for Red Hat OpenShift & Application Development at Red Hat said: “We are proud to collaborate with TECNALIA in the development of KATEA. Collaboration is part of our DNA and we develop our software based on open source principles so that our broad ecosystem can use it from any open hybrid cloud environment, which gives us unique value. This collaborative approach, based on open source code, allows us to integrate more easily into multi-company projects. KATEA is an excellent example of how collaboration can drive innovation and digital transformation.

Juan Meca, Corporate Business Director, Dell Technologies, said: “At Dell Technologies we understand the importance of driving innovation and we do this through robust, reliable and efficient technology solutions. Our PowerEdge hardware is the cornerstone of KATEA, TECNALIA’s new digital platforms. This collaboration accelerates the development and optimisation of digital solutions, providing a tangible return on investment and promoting technological growth in general and in R&D&I environments and with the application of Artificial Intelligence in particular”.

Secondly, Data Lab is a common data space where researchers can access project master data, data generated by singular laboratories or data generated by TECNALIA’s own buildings from its platform. The idea behind this platform is to unify data from very different origins and fields under a single space, allowing TECNALIA researchers and companies to exploit them in order to optimise existing lines of work or co-create new lines of research.

And thirdly, Compute Platform, a high-performance computing cluster that exceeds the PetaFLOP in power, offering high-performance computing capabilities for advanced scientific and technological applications. This platform specialises in AI model training, inference, simulation and analysis of structures and materials, and complex computations using tools such as Matlab, Jupyter Notebooks, and R Studio.

NVIDIA’s Javier Pemán emphasises “the importance of accelerating local research from the private sector to enable the development of new models, the fine tuning of existing models to business needs, and the optimisation of inference applied to industry-demanded use cases. Accelerating the practical adoption of AI and demonstrating returns on investment in parallel to the development of intellectual capital around Artificial Intelligence”.

The three platforms that make up KATEA are integrated and connected thanks to Arista’s technology. Thanks to it, TECNALIA has a complete and real-time view of its entire communications network to guarantee security and agility in operations.