LION bioscience & IBM to Offer On-Demand Computing for Drug Research

29-Oct-2002

LION bioscience AG and IBM announced an agreement to offer subscription-based hosted computing services to Life Sciences companies performing drug-related research. The first-of-its kind collaboration will provide powerful life science informatics functionality on demand over the Internet to help accelerate drug research and discovery.

As part of today's agreement, IBM will sell and co-market LION Hosted Services, a comprehensive services offering that provides cost-efficient access to leading life sciences applications and content without expensive infrastructure investments. IBM will offer LION Hosted Services, coupled with IBM software and computing power, via an IBM e-business hosting center, to life sciences customers in the United States, Canada, Europe and parts of Asia.

The joint offering from LION and IBM is designed to help accelerate research and drug discovery by allowing life sciences researchers to easily access and analyze chemical and biological data from a wide range of sources. The new e-business on-demand service will enable life sciences companies to tap into "virtual" computing power from a single point of access, resulting in faster and more accurate research results.

"This agreement is an important opportunity to combine IBM's services and high-performance computing and DiscoveryLink technologies with LION's scientific domain expertise, products and technologies, in particular our leading integration technologies SRS and LION DiscoveryCenter, to create a cost-efficient, on-demand service for all discovery activities," said Dr. Friedrich von Bohlen, chief executive officer of LION bioscience. "This collaboration represents an important endorsement of LION's hosted business model from the world's largest computer company. Having IBM as our seller and co-marketing partner is also expected to improve our margins for LION Hosted Services by reducing our costs. We at LION are excited by the prospect of working with IBM to introduce our hosted services to both IBM and LION global customer networks."

Biotechnology and other life sciences companies will be able to draw on the vast data integration and computing resources, skills and technologies of both LION and IBM on-demand over the Internet. Researchers will have access to LION's leading integration technologies and applications, including SRS and LION DiscoveryCenter, as well as IBM DiscoveryLink data integration software. SRS provides access to more than 600 scientific databases including GenBank, MEDLINE, SwissProt and Derwent. LION DiscoveryCenter enables researchers to seamlessly link biological, chemical and preclinical data from internal and external sources, providing a collaborative decision platform from which all drug discovery research can be managed. IBM DiscoveryLink applies a federated approach to data integration, which performs complex searches on diverse data types quickly and efficiently, and presents results in a consolidated and consistent format while allowing data to remain in its original format.

https://www.chemeurope.com/en/news/15447/lion-bioscience-ibm-to-offer-on-demand-computing-for-drug-research.html