Sector
Science & Space
Scientific computing rewards infrastructure designed for decade-long mission lifecycles. We have delivered inside the standards of the Science and Technology Facilities Council and the Royal Observatory Edinburgh.
Sector context
Science and space platforms operate on time horizons that enterprise IT rarely meets. CERN's Large Hadron Collider, ESA's GAIA spacecraft mapping a billion stars, and similar programmes run for decades and produce data that cannot be regenerated. The infrastructure beneath them has to be specified, operated and documented for the lifetime of the science, not the lifetime of the next budget cycle. Cipherer has delivered against these standards through the UK's Science and Technology Facilities Council and the Royal Observatory Edinburgh.
Track record
- STFC: CERN and GAIA mission infrastructure
Data processing and storage systems designed and deployed for CERN's Large Hadron Collider and the GAIA spacecraft mission. The LHC writes ~1 PB/day to permanent storage and ~90 PB/year into a tape archive that now totals around 1 exabyte (after triggers throw away ~99.99% of raw collision data in real time). 20+ mission-critical Windows and Linux servers managed; secure network infrastructure including firewalls, switches and VoIP maintained for research communications; capacity planning and lifecycle management delivered for scientific compute and storage hardware.
How we approach this sector
Decade-scale lifecycle engineering
Hardware refresh, capacity buffers, configuration documentation and operational procedures are designed for missions that run far longer than typical engineering tenure.
Mission-cadence operations
Maintenance windows are scheduled around mission events, not the other way around. In-place operations, partial failure tolerance and rapid recovery are the operating model.
Documentation as a deliverable
Configuration documentation, runbooks and capacity baselines are first-class artefacts. The next engineer through the door, in five or ten years, inherits a runnable system.