Analysis of Genomic Data in a Cloud Computing Environment

Abstract

A new trend for data analysis in the life sciences is Cloud computing, enabling the analysis of large datasets in short time. This chapter introduces Big Data challenges in the genomic era and how Cloud computing can be one feasible approach for solving them. Technical and security issues are discussed and a case study where Clouds are successfully applied to resolve computational bottlenecks in the analysis of genomic data is presented. It is an intentional outcome of this chapter that Cloud computing is not essential for analyzing Big Data. Rather, it is argued that for the optimized utilization of IT, it is required to choose the best architecture for each use case, either by security requirements, financial goals, optimized runtime through parallelization, or the ability for easier collaboration and data sharing with business partners on shared resources.