Global Biotech Firm Macrogen Selects HPE GreenLake to Accelerate Genomic Analysis and DNA Sequencing

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) today announced that Macrogen, a leading precision medicine and biotechnology company, has selected HPE GreenLake to modernize its IT operations, respond to fluctuating demands and deliver the speed, agility and scalability needed to process large-scale medical data analysis on-premises.

Macrogen has more than 18,000 customers in 153 countries and has the fifth-largest genetic analysis capability in the world. The company’s long-term mission is to build big data that improve prediction and prevention of human diseases and provide precision medicine. Genomic analysis and DNA sequencing are used in research and clinical trials where data cannot be stored in external facilities such as public clouds, due to privacy and security concerns.

Macrogen’s data analysis takes place primarily in the three months before and three months after the end of the year, resulting in a significant imbalance in capacity demand throughout the year. During these peak periods, the system runs for 24 hours a day generating vast amounts of data which need to be stored and analyzed every day. The biotech company consequently needed to develop cost-efficient, state-of-art genomic analysis systems to handle big data, while ensuring compliance with security policies to keep all sensitive medical data on-premises.

Macrogen turned to HPE to tackle this challenge by optimizing its storage capacity and maximizing the use of system resources during busier periods of time, while minimizing the cost from overprovisioning at the times of low utilization. With HPE GreenLake, Macrogen is able to meet the increased demands for storage and compute capacity at specific points of the year, ensure cost efficiency with pay-per-use billing and allow flexibility and scalability throughout the year to respond to fluctuating demands.

“Because large-scale medical research data is classified, secure information, we need to keep it in an on-premises environment instead of a public cloud," said Shin Sun-ho, head of Macrogen's IT division. “Pay-per-use billing, rapid scalability, automatic response to failures, and transparent resource management are the main reasons we chose HPE GreenLake. By creating a cloud-like environment with HPE, we have created an optimal environment where we can enjoy both the advantages of a public cloud and the benefits of an on-premise environment.”