CLC bio, Isilon Systems collaborate to eliminate analysis, storage bottlenecks in high-throughput sequencing workflows

CLC bioFeb 24 2010

Today, CLC bio, the world's leading bioinformatics solution provider, announced a partnership with Isilon® Systems, Inc. which will help the life science community eliminate some of the toughest workflow bottlenecks when working with high-throughput sequencing data: Analysis and storage.

CEO at CLC bio, Thomas Knudsen, states, "With high-throughput sequencing rising in popularity tremendously fast, our customers are constantly faced with storage challenges of a scale they haven't experienced previously. Isilon provides an excellent setup for bioinformatics with their flexible and scalable solutions and they have a lot of experience in this field already, which makes them a perfect partner for CLC bio and our core focus which is the analysis part."

Leonard Iventosch, VP of Global Channel and OEM at Isilon, continues, "Getting the sequencing instruments working and producing large datasets is the first hurdle in a high-throughput sequencing workflow. We know from our customers that analyses and storage are the other major hurdles. CLC bio is a great match for us with their cross-platform strategy supporting the many different environments we encounter in the life sciences. CLC bio’s deep expertise in high-throughput sequencing is a valuable asset as we continue delivering the benefits of Isilon scale-out NAS to life sciences organizations.”

Previously, DNA sequencing was time-consuming and costly, but within the last few years the cost of sequencing has decreased. At the same time, the speed of DNA sequencing has increased with the new high-throughput sequencing technologies, so it's now 10,000 times faster than the previous technology. The result is that 10,000 times more data is being generated per hour, which in turn creates bottlenecks in a lot of researchers' workflows when it comes to analyses and storage.

The partnership will start off by providing a bundle that combines CLC bio's "CLC Genomics Machine" with the Isilon IQ scale-out NAS platform. Custom setups for large scale enterprise solutions are also part of the agreement.