Thomas Duryea brings big data capabilities to Murdoch Childrens Research Institute

Melbourne, Australia — 14 May, 2013— IT Infrastructure solutions provider Thomas Duryea, has secured a contract with Australia’s largest and most prestigious child health research institute, Murdoch Childrens Research Institute (MCRI), to design and deploy a new storage infrastructure platform to support the big data analysis required to roll out Next Generation DNA Sequencing technology.

MCRI is one of a handful of major medical research centres in the world working with the revolutionary medical technology, which allows researchers, for the first time, to sequence the entire human genome and analyse these big data sets. The new technology potentially provides patients with more affordable, comprehensive diagnostic testing and can guide optimal pharmacological treatments.

To enable the roll out of Next Generation DNA Sequencing a highly scalable storage platform is required to support the analysis of big data sets generated as part of the testing.

“Data storage and how medical facilities such as ours can best utilise big data to benefit patients is a major challenge. For every patient tested using the Next Generation DNA Sequencing up to 3 billion bits of genome data is produced which places significant demands on storage infrastructure,” explains Professor Andrew Sinclair, associate director at MCRI.

The storage contract, which Thomas Duryea secured through a strong partnership with EMC, will see the IT integrator firstly extend MCRI’s current 117 terabyte storage capacity to support existing needs and then build the storage infrastructure platform to support the roll out of Next Generation DNA Sequencing. The new infrastructure will be built using EMC Isilon - a storage platform specifically developed for big data, which Andrew Thomas, chief executive officer at Thomas Duryea says will satisfy both MCRI’s current and future performance and capacity requirements.

“EMC Isilon scale out storage is the benchmark solution for these kind of projects as it delivers the best balance of high performance, scalability and ease of use, while minimising cost over time. With storage capacity starting at around 97 terabytes, the platform can scale up to 15 peta bytes which is why it is the storage platform of choice for other medical research centres around the world, such as Harvard Medical Research,” says Mr. Thomas.

Professor Sinclair estimates that when the new platform goes live in a few months time, MCRI will be able grow the number of patients currently being tested using Next Generation DNA Sequencing from 60 to over a 1000 in a year.

“Children’s health will be one of the first to benefit from the roll out of Next Generation DNA Sequencing, allowing for the early detection and diagnosis of genetic childhood conditions. However, I believe that genomic sequencing of patients will impact on all branches of medicine in the very near future,” says Professor Sinclair.

The contract with MCRI caps a strong start to 2013 for Thomas Duryea, with the company set to deliver its best first quarter on record for Professional Services, mainly driven by a number of new client wins in the enterprise space.

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About Thomas Duryea Consulting

Thomas Duryea Consulting design, plan, implement and manage innovative, world class IT infrastructure solutions – from the keyboard to the cloud. Thomas Duryea delivers projects by utilising best practice and proven methodologies across a range of industry sectors. Thomas Duryea’s specialist team pride themselves on technical excellence and work closely with clients as their strategic infrastructure partner, continually exceeding delivery expectations. 

For more information:

Melissa Shawyer, +61 412 066 048