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

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.”

Macrogen is also using HPE GreenLake Central, an advanced software platform that allows customers to run, manage and optimize their entire hybrid IT estate. The solution provides its IT team with a unified dashboard and operational console to deliver visibility, predictability, and centralized management of its operations and spend level. Macrogen can now keep track of and take action on a range of KPIs, including security, capacity, cost, compliance, and resource utilization, as well as monitor and minimize costs by eliminating large one-off financial investments.

“Servers are allocated to each division inside Macrogen and we can check and compare the usage status and costs of each division at a glance through HPE GreenLake Central,” added Shin Sun-ho. “We can also generate and print reports in the way we want and can deliver the report files to certain recipients on a designated date, making internal reporting much easier.”

HPE Pointnext Technology Services also provide HPE Datacenter Care maintenance services, which enable Macrogen to monitor and support failures through a real time failure detection system and significantly reduce the workload of the IT team.

“Macrogen needed to respond to sudden increases in demand and wanted the cloud experience combined with the visibility, compliance, and security that comes with preserving their applications and data on-premises and at the edge,” said Young-Chae Kim, vice president and managing director, HPE Korea. “With the new technology infrastructure, delivered via HPE GreenLake, Macrogen has increased its operational efficiency and enhanced its capabilities to perform important large-scale medical data analysis more quickly and at lower cost.”

HPE GreenLake Cloud Services provide customers with a powerful foundation to drive digital transformation through an elastic as a service platform that can run on-premises, at the edge, or in a colocation facility. HPE GreenLake combines the simplicity and agility of the cloud with the governance, compliance, and visibility that comes with hybrid IT. HPE GreenLake offers a range of cloud services that accelerate innovation, including cloud services for compute, container management, data protection, HPC, machine learning operations, networking, SAP HANA, and storage, VDI, and VMs. The HPE GreenLake Cloud Services business is rapidly growing with over $4 billion USD in total contract value, over 700 partners selling HPE GreenLake, and more than 1000 customers in all industry sectors and sizes including Fortune 500 companies. For more information on HPE GreenLake, please visit: https://www.hpe.com/us/en/greenlake.html

About Macrogen

Macrogen, a leading company in precision medicine and biotechnology, was established on June 5, 1997 based on the Genomic Medicine Institute of the Seoul National University College of Medicine. In February 2000, Macrogen became the first ever bio venture in Korea to be listed on the KOSDAQ. Since then, Macrogen has continued to be actively engaged in R&D fields of genetic and genomic analyses. Today, Macrogen has become a global expert in genomic analysis and a leader in Korean biotechnology, working closely with over 18,000 research clients across 153 countries worldwide. In addition to providing services to clients all over the world, Macrogen contributes to the advancement of bioindustries through a wide range of R&D and CSR activities.

About HPE

Hewlett Packard Enterprise is the global edge-to-cloud platform-as-a-service company that helps organizations accelerate outcomes by unlocking value from all of their data, everywhere. Built on decades of reimagining the future and innovating to advance the way we live and work, HPE delivers unique, open and intelligent technology solutions, with a consistent experience across all clouds and edges, to help customers develop new business models, engage in new ways, and increase operational performance. For more information, visit: www.hpe.com.

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