labfolder GmbH, which exhibited its electronic lab notebook at LABVOLUTION 2017, announced the new cooperation agreement with NEC Deutschland GmbH at the end of July this year. The new partners anticipate that, within the next decade, the field of genomics will be generating up to 40 billion gigabytes of data a year, posing huge challenges when it comes to storing, managing and sharing information. labfolder and NEC have an answer though, in the form of new efficient IT infrastructures for large research organizations.

The two companies have partnered up to provide a simple, cost-effective and scalable package solution to this problem. NEC is contributing the hardware and labfolder the software. NEC aims to offer research institutions a dockerized IBM Spectrum Scale implementation of its GxFS Storage Appliance, which can start from 30 TB and scales to 100+ PB. The design of the GxFS Storage Appliance is geared toward data integrity with the use of mature components such as SANtricity-based SNA800 storage systems. "The new GxFS system enables research organizations to achieve market-leading availability, performance and security and safeguard all that for the long term," comments Dr. Heiko Schäffer of NEC, who sees the new partnership between NEC and labfolder as "a large value driver for research institutions."

labfolder provides research data management software in the form of a digital lab notebook, supporting scientists in their quest to make scientific discoveries. labfolder's software as a service (SaaS) aims to make it easier to record, manage, retrieve, share, discuss and validate research data as a team. "labfolder is used by more than 20,000 academic, industrial and pharmaceutical scientists in research and development (R&D), analysis, and production labs,” explains Dr. Florian Hauer, co-founder and CPO of labfolder. “labfolder’s platform, together with the NEC GxFS Storage Appliance, allows laboratories to optimize their data management processes. The ability to handle big data in science has become a key challenge of size and complexity", he adds.

labfolder GmbH (12435 Berlin, Germany)
Website: www.labfolder.com/