Australian BioCommons Standardizes Bioinformatics and Scales Compute Access Nationwide with Seqera
Read the full case study340+
Researchers supported by the Australian Nextflow Seqera Service
$50k AUD
Saved per year on licensing, deployment, and support costs
40+
Australian organizations supported through scaled national access to compute infrastructure
Aim
To provide bioinformatics platforms, expertise, and computational infrastructure that enable the Australian research community to effectively analyze molecular and biological data at scale.Challenges
- →Diverse user base: Wide range of scientific domains, skill levels, and institutions.
- →Resource prioritization: Limited resources, national scale, hard to prioritize impact.
- →Fragmented infrastructure: Disparate services, platforms, and computing infrastructures.
- →Varying requirements: Different objectives, compute needs, and technical skills across users.
- →Scalability and consistency: Hard to deliver one seamless, standardized experience at scale.
— Ziad Al-Bkhetan, Product Manager, Bioinformatics Platforms, Australian BioCommons
Solution
Nextflow
Core workflow management system used for developing and deploying custom bioinformatics pipelines that are reproducible, portable, and scalable.
Seqera Platform
Deploy as a national service giving researchers and organizations centralized access, while BioCommons manages the underlying infrastructure.
Seqera APIs
Power internally developed services that extend the platform, automating access, orchestration, and support at a scale manual processes couldn't match.
Cloud and National HPCs
Provide the underlying compute, used to run BioCommons services and to give researchers direct access to national-scale infrastructure.
Results
With Seqera, Australian BioCommons launched the Australian Nextflow Seqera Service, providing a centralized command post for Australian researchers to easily manage, launch, and monitor Nextflow pipelines at scale. The Pawsey, NCI, and Seqera, and supported by NCRIS funding via Bioplatforms Australia. The team at Australian BioCommons provides bioinformatics expertise, researcher support, and technical consultations to help researchers effectively utilize bioinformatics software and computational infrastructure for their work. This has standardized bioinformatics analysis nationwide, scaled compute access and capacity beyond institutional limits, and reduced costs by eliminating duplicated infrastructure and setup burdens for individual research groups.
340+
Opportunity
National-scale democratization
Seamless access to bioinformatics across institutions, enabling large-scale collaboration.
Focus on science, not infrastructure
Streamlined tool access lets researchers drive faster outcomes in health, agriculture, and environmental research.
Standardized, scalable benchmark
Lowers technical barriers and accelerates innovation nationally.
International blueprint
A replicable model that helps other countries save time and avoid similar challenges.
About
Australian BioCommons is Australia’s digital research infrastructure for molecular life science researchers in academia, government, and industry. Australian BioCommons is enhancing Australian research by providing enduring access to digital research infrastructure, tools, software and training to understand the molecular basis of life across environmental, agricultural and biomedical sciences.
To learn more, visit https://www.biocommons.org.au/