Microsoft Azure Powers New Research Effort

Microsoft is looking to lend a hand to the scientific research community. The company has developed a version of the National Center for Biotechnology Information’s (NCBI) Basic Local Alignment Search Tool, or BLAST, based on its Azure cloud-computing platform.

The new BLAST on Azure platform, announced at the Supercomputing 10 conference in New Orleans, is intended to enable researchers to run multiple instances in a high-performance computing environment for applications such as researching biofuel production or drug effectiveness. Code Guru has the story.

Microsoft announced Tuesday that it has developed a free version of a key analysis application for the biosciences that provides dynamic, high performance computing-like (HPC) performance via the company’s Microsoft Azure cloud computing service.

Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) has developed a version of the National Center for Biotechnology Information’s (NCBI) Basic Local Alignment Search Tool (BLAST), an application that is widely used in the life sciences to handle compute intensive tasks such as comparing DNA and protein sequences.

Read the full story at Cod Guru:


Researchers Have a ‘BLAST’ With Microsoft Azure