The benefits of using cloud computing for Stem Cell Imaging Nick Trigg CEO, Constellation 24 th June 2009

Constellation Technologies Cloud computing solutions and services to companies/institutions with large computing needs –Providing expertise into a variety of sectors Using technology developed at CERN –European Particle Physics research Over €100m spent on the technology –Robust and working Independent of hardware and across operating systems >90,000 CPUs >280 globally distributed sites >120,000 jobs per day Based at Rutherford Appleton Laboratory –Centre for CERN research in the UK –Centre for National Grid Service research in the UK –Services to Life-Science research community through Vulcan, ISIS and Diamond Light Source

Heritage from Particle Physics Massive amounts of data - Petabytes –Compute and storage –Recognising patterns or trends in images –Collaborative research –Shared resources Data generation Data storage Data manipulation Open source –On-going support and development –Available applications

Example – life sciences Client –Global pharmaceutical company Challenge –DNA sequencing Large data sets Long compute times required Solution –Cloud computing solution Calculations performed on an academic cloud x21 faster compute times at less cost –Parallelised code No loss in accuracy, security or availability Other project –Reduced 80 PC years to 6 weeks!

Use in Stem Cell image processing Imaging data is growing –many Terabytes More detailed images Taken more frequently Additional analysis Storage and compute challenges Secure collaboration