NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – NextBio said today that it is partnering with Intel to make improvements to the Hadoop stack that will support its use for genomic data analysis.
Specifically, NextBio and Intel engineering teams will make enhancements to the Hadoop Distributed File System, Hadoop, and HBase using lessons learned from NextBio's efforts to use these technologies internally, the company said.
Satnam Alag, NextBio's chief technology officer and vice president of engineering, said in statement that his firm has "invested significantly" in big data technologies to enable researchers to manage and mine large quantities of genomic data to discover new biomarkers, clinically assess targets and drug profiles, design clinical trials, and interpret patient molecular data.
"Without the implementation of our algorithms in the MapReduce framework, operational expertise in HDFS, Hadoop, and HBase, and investments in building our secure cloud-based infrastructure, it would have been impossible for us to scale cost-effectively to handle this large-scale data," he said.
NextBio said that any enhancements made to the stack as a result of its collaboration with Intel will be contributed to the open-source community.