Cloudian, OnRamp, ScaleMatrix Partnership Eyes Faster, Lower-Cost Genome Analysis.
Written By: Neil Versel
CHICAGO (GenomeWeb) - When ScaleMatrix, OnRamp Bioinformatics, and Cloudian decided to get together in an effort to speed up sequencing analysis and lower the cost of data storage, they saw several shortcomings in the genomic informatics market.
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Storage may be affordable for other IT applications, but genomic datasets are massive. They are also complex, perhaps too much so for purely cloud-based technologies. And, perhaps most importantly, there simply are not enough trained bioinformaticians to support the demand for genomics-based research, according to executives from the three companies.
This week, ScaleMatrix, operator of a life sciences incubator and data center in San Diego, announced a three-way partnership with San Diego-based genomic informatics vendor OnRamp Bioinformatics and cloud storage company Cloudian, of San Mateo, California.
The trio of companies is looking to improve efficiency in data analysis by combining their technologies and the ScaleMatrix facility, Cloudian Chief Marketing Officer Jon Toor said.
The 14,000-square-foot ScaleMatrix campus houses a data center and a CLIA-certified genomics laboratory. It also serves as a business incubator and co-working facility for startups in bioinformatics and genetics. That opened in January to serve the burgeoning bioinformatics, molecular analytics, and genetics industries in Southern California.
But the combined offerings are for genomics operations of all sizes and in all locations, company executives suggested.
OnRamp-Cloudian-ScaleMatrix partnership aims to take some of the load off the bioinformatics community.
Tim Wesselman, CEO of OnRamp Bioinformatics, said that there are perhaps 15,000 bioinformaticians worldwide today, to support more than 2 million biologists and researchers.
"They are heavily bottlenecked for the genomics industry to grow and scale," Wesselman said. "We can't crank them out fast enough from universities. [Researchers] need tools and solutions that speak their language."
Wesselman, a former strategy leader of Hewlett Packard's hyperscale infrastructure group, said that research centers OnRamp works with have expressed confusion about genomic and proteomic data that might help unlock mysteries of certain pediatric cancers. "They contacted us and said, 'We don't know what to do with this data. We don't even know what it is.' They had done beautifully designed experiments, but the data they got back was unintelligible to them," he said.
The new OnRamp-Cloudian-ScaleMatrix partnership aims to take some of the load off the bioinformatics community.
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Based in Silicon Valley, Cloudian is a leading provider of enterprise object storage systems. Our flagship product, Cloudian HyperStore, enables service providers and enterprises to build reliable, affordable and scalable hybrid cloud storage solutions. Join us on LinkedIn, follow us on Twitter (@CloudianStorage) and Facebook, or visit us at www.cloudian.com.
Based in the Genomics Capital of San Diego, OnRamp BioInformatics provides software and systems to streamline and simplify the analysis, data management and storage of large-scale genomic datasets so that biologists, researchers and drug developers can harness the potential of DNA sequencing, while reducing costs and increasing productivity. More than 2000 analyses have been completed by OnRamp Bio’s solutions, and have been recognized as best practices for bioinformatics by Expert Review of Molecular Diagnostics. Follow us on Twitter (@OnRampBio) and Facebook, or visit us at www.onramp.bio.
