Bluebee Teams Up with Aspera for Fast Transfer of Genomics Data for Clinical Applications

ARMONK, NY - April 5, 2016: IBM (NYSE:IBM) today announced that Bluebee, a leading provider of high-performance genomics solutions, has deployed high-speed file transfer solutions from Aspera, an IBM company, running on the IBM Cloud and integrated directly into the Bluebee genome analytics platform. Aspera transfers reduce the end-to-end turnaround time of computational data analysis, enabling Bluebee to deliver results to clients significantly faster and more efficiently than was previously possible.

Bluebee's genome analytics platform enables efficient pipeline processing by combining best-in-class tools with a high-performance computational engine. The addition of Aspera's flexible and highly scalable Aspera On Demand (AOD) software supports Bluebee's users with high-speed, reliable and resilient transfers even for the largest data sets, including entire genomes that can reach up to 90 GB per sample.

Bluebee's clients submit samples of all sizes, the largest coming from cancer centers, which typically submit 2-3 tumor cell samples along with a control sample for each patient, bringing the total volume of NGS data to upwards of 360 GB per patient that must be uploaded to the platform.

Initial tests comparing FTPS and Aspera found that transfer speeds for a 10GB file sent over the same network have increased by a factor of 6 with Aspera.

Tumor and other samples are collected, are prepped and sequenced in a Wet Lab, and the resulting data is then transferred to Bluebee's Silicon Lab for secondary analysis. Whole genomes, cancer sequencing data, agricultural data and other large files are transferred while sequencing is ongoing to save time, while smaller samples are uploaded in batches once sequencing is complete.

The fusion of technologies pairing Bluebee's advanced genome analytics application and Aspera FASP high-speed transfer technology supports fast, efficient and affordable diagnosis, providing significant implications for clinical settings. By enabling hospitals, diagnostic test providers, research centers and other clients to quickly and securely transfer large volumes of genomics data, Aspera shortens the data analysis turnaround time so data can be interpreted and patients can be diagnosed and begin therapy as soon as possible.

AOD's pay-as-you-go model offering fits with Bluebee's usage-based billing to eliminate the burden of time and capital expenditure that is incurred to manage and maintain in-house infrastructure.

When on-site infrastructure is not able to scale up with increasing mass data volumes, sequence waiting lists are inevitably formed. This seriously hampers the speed of diagnosis and delays research. Bluebee addresses this genome analysis challenge by providing a highly scalable private cloud platform for accelerated processing of mass volumes of NGS data, and the speed and resiliency of the Aspera solution allows our clients to transfer huge data sets directly to the platform, said Kurt Florus, CTO at Bluebee. Together the solutions significantly accelerate the turnaround time for data processing while at the same time solving the data throughput issue. We strongly believe in the value Aspera brings to our customers and in the competitive advantage the collaboration gives us.

In the field of genomic analysis, platforms like Bluebee can make computing, processing and analysis as fast as imaginable, but the reality is the impact is lost if the data takes forever to transfer. Shortening the time it takes to transfer huge data volumes between labs, analysis platforms and the hospitals that rely on this data for diagnosis will have a tremendous impact on clinics' ability to treat patients in a timely manner, said Richard Heitmann, vice president of marketing at Aspera.

Aspera CEO & co-founder Michelle Munson will co-present alongside Bluebee CEO Hans Cobben: How Bluebee & Others Solve the File Exchange Problem for Bioinformatics, on Wednesday, April 6 at 2:55pm at Bio-IT World. Visit Aspera at Booth #261.

About Bluebee

Bluebee provides high performance genomics solutions, enabling genomic labs to substantially reduce cost and time-to-diagnosis. Bluebee's unique cloud-based accelerated genomics platform enables fast, efficient and affordable processing of large volumes of genomics data. With Bluebee's private-cloud based solutions, labs can run their pipelines orders of magnitude faster without compromising the algorithms and methods used, nor the flexibility required to provide quality, sensitivity and reliability. Please visit www.bluebee.com and follow us on Twitter @bluebeegenomics for more information.

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