But as things stand, change is the only constant. Bioinformatics is very much in flux, as the life sciences are quickly becoming a data science. In the future, small research projects will not only rely on high-throughput sequencing, but on bringing multiple systems-wide data sets to bear. Researchers will not be able to hire or train a developer as an afterthought. IT infrastructure is an absolute necessity at the inception of the project. The question is, where does it make most sense to manage IT resources, locally or remotely? The answer to that question will depend on an institution’s existing infrastructure. Large IT departments with a mature data center might be able to handle the capacity. But for small groups it make more sense to outsource the IT infrastructure to a growing, scalable data center known as the cloud.
That’s what I was talking about
In a great blog post about cloud computing and bioinformatics, Shiran Pasternak pretty much summarizes many of the points I was making in my talks at Supercomputing. I hope to write up more of those thoughts either here or at the AWS blog.
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