Skyscape Cloud Services has been chosen by Genomics England to deliver Compute-as-a-Service solutions to support the 100,000 Genomes Project, which aims to make the UK a world leader in genomics research.
The Project is currently focused on sequencing whole genomes of patients with certain rare diseases and cancers, where scientists believe they can have the greatest impact on diagnosis and treatment. Technologies such as cloud computing are helping to significantly reduce the cost of genome sequencing which will enable whole genome sequencing to become part of NHS mainstream healthcare in the future.
Key to Genomics England’s decision was Skyscape’s heritage as a trusted UK government cloud services provider, with the highest possible levels of resilience and security. Skyscape’s full service catalogue is suitable for all data at OFFICIAL (including OFFICIAL SENSITIVE) under the Government Security Classification Policy. Skyscape was also the first cloud provider to achieve N3 aggregator status, enabling it to better serve the healthcare community.
Genomics England will leverage the Skyscape Compute-as-a-Service platform for the processing and analysis of genomic data. Genomics England will build a high performance compute cluster that will drive over 20,000 CPU cores. The Genomics England solution will utilise Skyscape’s two UK data centres to host a private cloud and will be available to health and social care organisations via the N3 network.
“Given the nature of our work and the sensitive patient data that we are entrusted with, it was crucial that we enlisted the help of a cloud services provider with an exemplary record when it comes to security,” said Dave Brown, Head of Infrastructure at Genomics England. “Indeed as a public body, value for money and scalability were also top of our list of priorities. As a result, we turned to the G-Cloud Framework to ensure that we selected a fully accredited and flexible supplier and are delighted to be working with Skyscape on the Project.”
“As is the case for any public sector body, security and value for money were essential for Genomics England and we are proud to be supporting the vital work of the 100,000 Genomes Project with our IaaS solutions,” said Simon Hansford, Skyscape Cloud Services’ CEO. “This is also the latest customer-win for Skyscape via the G-Cloud Framework, which continues to benefit SMEs by enabling competitive and innovative suppliers to reach the public sector market. Our work with Genomics England also demonstrates the part that G-Cloud has to play in supporting transformational projects such as this with flexible and massively scalable cloud solutions, without compromising on security.”
