VPAC goes commercial to target start-ups' IT needs

Small companies within Australia's growing life sciences industry are starting to compute like the big boys, thanks to a growing investment in the sector by companies keen to feed its hunger for high-performance computing (HPC) systems.

The Victorian Partnership for Advanced Computing (VPAC) is the latest firm to weigh in on the IT possibilities of Australia's growing life sciences sector, having this quarter launched its commercial AusBioSoft division.

One of several state-based university consortia created as centres of gravity for HPC projects, four-year-old VPAC is expanding its scope as commercial customers of all sizes warm to the importance of having ready access to high-end computing. AusBioSoft, like its sister company Centre for Computational Prototyping (CCP), has been created to meet this need by servicing the often tiny life sciences companies finding that bioinformatics is playing an increasing role in their research.

For its part, CCP -- based near Holden Australia's Fisherman's Bend headquarters -- has strong support from Holden and links Holden automotive design engineers with VPAC's computing resources and experts. To support that arrangement, VPAC provides Holden with access to fluid dynamics, finite element analysis and other mathematically intense systems running on VPAC's systems.

AusBioSoft, a joint venture between VPAC and the Canberra-based Australian Partnership for Advanced Computing (APAC), has been targeted at the opposite end of the scale, where small companies often struggle to find the funding and expertise necessary to run the applications they need. Companies like Holden spare no expense to capitalise upon potentially important new technologies, but AusBioSoft's target market faces strict time and budget constraints.

"Life sciences companies are using a huge variety of products, and as they've often come from academic roots or small companies they typically don't have much software expertise," says VPAC director Bill Appelbe. "They're research centres, not centres in software support. There's a clear need for those companies to have IT support, but just keeping a computer room running can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars a year."

Positioning itself as both a systems outsourcer and consulting company, AusBioSoft is patterning itself as an expert in integrating and running the open source software that's become endemic to modern life sciences research. It will also host applications such as document management and financial systems, other areas where small companies may struggle to provide the procedural rigour they need to survive.

VPAC already has a history of bio-IT consulting, having worked with companies like Kinacia, Biota and the Victorian Infectious Disease and Reference Laboratories. It is now aiming to ramp up its profile (and size: staff currently number just four). VPAC's links with Melbourne universities also gives it access to a broad range of computing experts who can be brought in as consultants as necessary.

Appelbe estimates that the company would be self-sustaining on revenues of around $1 million a year, which would be enough to support a staff of 12 -- enough to provide the depth of having more than one expert in key subject matter areas such as biochemistry and genetics.

"There's a compelling argument for outsourcing, and there's already a missing market," he says, confident that AusBioSoft's small size and nimbleness will allow it to carve out a niche despite incursions of IT giant like IBM. "Everyone is saying they want this, but partly because we're a new game on the block people are still getting their heads around the idea."