Illumina Announces Fully Integrated High-Performance Computing for Sequencing Customers

At the BioIT World Europe Conference, Illumina, Inc. announced the launch of IlluminaCompute, a fully integrated computing solution for its Genome Analyzer sequencing platform. Bringing together Illumina’s powerful sequencing software with high-performance blade servers from Dell’s OEM and Life Sciences Group and modular storage capacity from Isilon Systems, Inc., IlluminaCompute creates a flexible and scalable system for human scale genomic data analysis. The new solution conserves IT resources by providing centralized high-performance computational and storage infrastructure, compared to the support required for individual, decentralized analysis servers.

“Illumina and our IT partners collaborated to address an unmet need for highly scalable computing capabilities that can keep pace with the remarkable growth in the throughput of the Genome Analyzer,” said Scott Kahn, vice president and chief information officer. “No other genomics provider currently offers a turn-key solution like IlluminaCompute that can be customized and extended for small and growing sequencing facilities and also scaled to meet the needs of larger genome centers.” Because IlluminaCompute can be quickly and easily added to or reconfigured with support from Illumina, researchers can keep pace with changes to their computing needs with virtually no system down-time.

IlluminaCompute is a unique bundling of hardware, informatics software and high-availability storage that is delivered and supported directly by Illumina’s Customer Solutions team. The system is tuned specifically for a high-throughput sequence analysis workflow. Server and disk management overhead is kept to an absolute minimum, reducing the need for dedicated IT and bioinformatics staff. The result is a greatly empowered lab. IlluminaCompute provides sufficient processing resources for computational-heavy analysis that requires clustered processing and shared data repositories, such as genome assembly, deep sequencing and metagenomics research.

Comprehensive customer service is a key distinguishing factor with IlluminaCompute. Illumina evaluates customer needs and validates the installation site prior to installation. Once the system is installed and configured for the customer by Illumina technical service, it requires very little intervention or maintenance. From concept and design to activation and training, Illumina is with the customer every step of the way to ensure a fully successful experience with the product.

“IlluminaCompute represents a shared commitment on the part of Illumina, Dell and Isilon to raise the bar in terms of system reliability and minimize the time-to-results, all while lowering the total cost of genomic research,” said Jordan Stockton, senior market manager of Computational Biology. “The combination of Isilon’s highly scalable yet easy to manage storage system, Dell’s reliable and cost effective servers and OEM expertise, and Illumina’s industry-leading sequencing technology creates efficiencies that translate directly into better outcomes for researchers.”

IlluminaCompute has been developed and validated in coordination with several leading genome centers, to optimize computing and storage technologies and deliver a truly flexible and high-quality product suitable for a wide range of customers. It will be available in November 2009.