Partnership to Develop Solutions for Handling Big Data

Electronic lab notebook developer labfolder and NEC Deutschland GmbH, a global leader in the integration of IT and network technologies, are collaborating on a project to provide large research organisations with a simple, cost effective and scalable method for storing and managing large data sets. Financial details of the partnership, in which NEC will provide the hardware and labfolder the software, were not disclosed.

Scientists have predicted for a number of years that genomics – the field of sequencing human DNA – will soon become one of the largest sources of data in the world. It is estimated that within the next decade, genomics alone will generate between 2 and 40 billion gigabytes a year. .

NEC currently offers research institutions a dockerised IBM Spectrum Scale implementation of its GxFS Storage Appliance, which can start from 30 TB and scales to 100+ PB. Dr. Heiko Schäffer of NEC said “the new GxFS system enables research organisations to achieve market-leading availability, performance and security”.

Labfolder’s notebook form software enables scientists to record, retrieve, share, discuss and validate research data as a team. “labfolder is used by more than 20,000 academic, industrial and pharmaceutical scientists in research and development (R&D), analysis and production labs”, said Dr. Florian Hauer, co-founder and CPO of labfolder.

“labfolder’s platform, together with NEC GxFS Storage Appliance, allows laboratories to optimise their data management processes. The ability to handle big data in science has become a key challenge of size and complexity”, affirms Dr. Hauer. Schäffer, who called the partnership between NEC and labfolder “a large value driver for research institutions.”