The Amazon model, which customers rent server space on a pay-as-you-go basis, and get access to their data anytime via the Internet. It’s supposed to allow small businesses, governments, and anybody else to save cash and hassles by not having to buy and maintain their own in-house servers. The model is credited with enabling a new generation of lean tech startups to build businesses using far less capital.
Computing challenges have become a “serious blocker” to people trying to make sense of the genomic wave, Singh says. And Amazon has made it a high priority over the past couple years to become the company that stores genomic data in a cheaper and more accessible way for researchers. Customers, Singh says, “have started looking at the cloud very seriously as a possible option. Over the last year or so, that curiosity has turned into serious adoption.”
