UK Met Office Chooses Cray AI Solution to Unlock Business Value

Cray (NASDAQ:CRAY) announced that the UK Met Office has expanded its Cray XC40 supercomputer with artificial intelligence and analytics capabilities.

As quoted in the press release:

The Met Office added Cray’s Urika®-XC AI and analytics software suite to its supercomputer to unlock the highest levels of business value from the massive volumes of weather data it processes daily.

The Met Office is using Cray’s Urika-XC suite to explore the use of new methods, such as machine learning, in extracting insights from observational and model data to better develop and customize commercial products, such as tailored forecasts. The Urika-XC suite was designed to run on Cray XC systems to eliminate the need for organizations to install new purpose-built analytics hardware and enable customers to run simulation and big data workloads on the same system.

“As in many industries, we are challenged with increasing data volumes and are turning to large-scale analytics, machine learning and deep learning applications to drive new insights and innovation,” said Charles Ewen, director of technology and CIO at the Met Office. “The Met Office already has one of the world’s largest Cray XC supercomputing systems. Now with our implementation of Cray’s Urika-XC software, we are applying AI and analytics to deliver ever-more accurate and detailed weather forecasts and climate change analyses, while also developing new commercial products.”

With the power of a Cray supercomputer, the Met Office is able to take in 215 billion weather observations from all over the world every day and uses an advanced atmospheric model to create tailored forecasts and briefings that are delivered to customers including governments, environmental agencies, the military and the general public as well as businesses and other organizations.

“Cray and the Met Office share a long, productive and successful relationship, and we’re pleased that one of the world’s most prestigious weather agencies is taking the next step using Cray AI and analytics solutions to augment their capabilities to drive new business opportunities,” said Per Nyberg, vice president of market development, artificial intelligence and cloud at Cray. “The Met Office’s decision demonstrates its confidence in Cray’s innovation and creativity in helping tackle some of the planet’s biggest weather and climate challenges. At Cray, we believe big data analytics, modeling and simulation are converging into new workflows leading to powerful insights for customers.”

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