Chris Collins, head of research and specialist computing support at UEA, said the university was migrating new users on to the system all the time. He said: "We use Platform MPI (included in the Platform HPC system) for migrations, since transferring and linking applications can be a tedious process.

"Before, we had to differentiate what nodes applications could run on. Now we can run on both Ethernet and Infiniband networks, make a request for an application, and easily link it to Platform MPI."

Collins said the web interface in Platform HPC was another factor in choosing it. "With the challenge of getting non-HPC users to use the system we could allow them to use the web front-end instead of using the command line interface," he said. "We don't have to do as much work when releasing a new application or do as much new coding."

With the support of Platform HPC UEA has more than doubled its computing power, going from a capacity of 9 teraflops to 21.5 teraflops in just a few months.

Last year, the Information Commissioner's Office published on freedom of information legislation and potentially valuable research information for the higher education sector, after the "" controversy which UEA became embroiled in.