call+1 609 681 5754
emailsales@mediaagility.com
Español
English
MediaAgility- Logo
  • SOLUTIONS
  • INDUSTRIES
  • EVENTS
  • INSIGHTS
  • ABOUT
  • CONTACT

Here’s How We Helped a DNA Sequencing Company Reduce 35% of their Data Processing Costs with Google Cloud

Shivani SharmaINSIGHTS, RESOURCESMay 22, 2017

It was late 2015, when a DNA sequencing company based in Silicon Valley, collaborated with MediaAgility to develop a robust genetic data analysis and discovery platform. The company is dedicated to simplifying genetic testing while making it affordable. Their aim is to make genetic information globally available to help blood banks, hospitals, commercial laboratories, government agencies, and alternate care testing sites.

In early 2016, MediaAgility delivered a cloud based genetic data analysis and discovery platform on Amazon Web Services (AWS). The solution organizes analytical data derived from experiments run by scientists in an easily accessible, organized manner. The solution has smart filters to analyze data and monitor progress of experiments through various stages of analysis.

DNA sequencing of a single human genome can potentially produce several hundred gigabytes of data. Hence, their experimental data grew to petabytes within months. Within 6 months from implementation, the storage platform’s extensively rocketing costs alarmed the customer.

Their entire technical team was perplexed with rapidly increasing data and associated costs. They approached cloud experts at MediaAgility and expressed their concerns about the  emerging requirement of achieving an optimized and cost effective DNA sequencing process. They noticed they were bearing almost $30,000 per month in May, which hiked to nearly $50,000 per month by June 2016!

Here’s how MediaAgility curbed their cloud storage costs…

Costs were growing exponentially. In pursuit to control increasing costs, data analytics team at MediaAgility started talking to scientific groups and researchers at the customer’s organization. The team found out that after conducting research and adding annotations, ‘Raw experimental data’ was the only dataset category that was rarely used after a certain amount of time, yet, was consuming massive storage.

The MediaAgility team devised a robust data storage and processing mechanism where the system asked scientists to mark / flag data they wanted to save and archive. With the use of Data Object Lifecycle Management configurations, the team identified and downgraded the storage class of experiments data that was not accessed within last 365 days to Coldline Storage and moved experiments data, which was accessed at the frequency of once a month to multiple times in a year, to Nearline Storage. The mechanism helped customer optimize their data computing process and helped them save approximately $80,000 on the storage front.

What followed next? Well, a comparison.

We did not stop at curbing storage costs. We decided to do a quick comparison between Google Cloud Platform with Amazon Web Services to let our solution run on most suitable computing platform.  

Here’s a quick dissection of the story, or say, our observations when we compared the two major computing platforms for this particular solution :

Our decision to move the solution to Google Cloud Platform definitely helped our customer  achieve faster results at reduced costs!

Saved More is Earned More!

Consistent to our mission of making solutions that help innovators succeed, our cloud team engineered the solution that helped customer execute DNA sequencing workflows on Google Cloud infrastructure efficiently. This not only increased the throughput, reduced the overall time taken in performing analysis but also substantially reduced the analysis cost per experiment by around 35%.

In our experience with this solution, the Google Cloud’s proactive after-sales services, intuitive interface, coupled with cheaper costs, flexible compute options, pay-per-minute pricing, and preemptible instances made the Google Cloud Platform a very attractive alternative to AWS!

AWS versus GCP is a common topic of discussion, or sometimes, a common point of confusion among IT decision makers. The competing cloud platforms come with their own distinct features and services, and in this case, we compared AWS with GCP and discovered it might be worth giving GCP a serious look if you are struggling with compute and storage issues.

Are you too thinking to move your existing systems to Google Cloud Platform? Google Cloud wins big on 12-month free trial!  Reach out to us and as a Google Cloud Premier Partner, we will be happy to connect you with one of our Google certified cloud experts!

 

Note: Comparing GCP and AWS cloud pricing is complicated. Pricing of compute and storage may vary from use-case to use-case and would depend on how we architect our cloud solutions, what APIs and services we avail. This article is not intended to compare AWS and GCP platforms as whole. With this article we share our experience about how MediaAgility team ensured cost savings for the customer while working on a particular solution.  

Previous Post Here’s How Leading Healthcare and Genomics Research Organizations Scaled up Their Research and Reduced Costs by Almost 60% Next Post Top 5 Machine Learning Features in G Suite to Make You and Your Teams More Productive

Recent Posts

  • MediaAgility Achieves 200+ Active Google Cloud Certifications Under MediaAgility’s Lifelong Learning initiative
  • Write efficient queries on BigQuery
  • MediaAgility helps one of India’s leading B2B marketplaces to sustainably scale their platform’s availability and speed with Google Cloud Platform
  • MediaAgility helps Reliance Mutual Funds build India’s first voice algorithm for the financial services industry on Google Cloud Platform
  • Wellness Forever optimize their hyperlocal delivery operations with Google Cloud Platform, Google Maps, and MediaAgility

About MediaAgility

Transformative innovation requires data that drives decisions — and a proven partner to capture key insights, define solution pathways and leverage advanced capabilities to solve demanding challenges.

Innovators rely on MediaAgility and Google Cloud to move them rapidly from idea to impact. Together, you’ll create intelligence solutions that lead the way towards innovation.
SOLUTIONS
Big Data and Analytics
Collaboration and Productivity
Operational Intelligence
Cloud Journey
Machine Learning
INDUSTRIES
Healthcare and Life Sciences
Financial Services
Media and Advertising
Travel, Transportation and Logistics
Retail and Commerce
Food and Beverages
Manufacturing
INSIGHTS
Insights
Customer Stories
Podcast
News
Employee Stories
ABOUT
Life at MediaAgility
Careers
Leadership
Partners

© 2019 MediaAgility Inc. All Rights Reserved | Terms of Use | Privacy

MediaAgility uses cookies to improve user experience. By using our website you consent to all cookies in accordance with our Privacy Policy