DTL and the Virtual Lab of Plant Breeding (VLPB) consortium successfully co-organised the workshop “Galaxy and Cloud Solutions”. The rationale of organising this workshop is that many companies are facing a tsunami of big data sets and organize themselves in consortia, such as VLPB and Breed4Food, to develop bioinformatics solutions to analyze this data.The aim of this one-day course was to inform companies, which do not have the expert knowledge in-house to start using the developed bioinformatics solutions directly, about technical solutions to use the developed technologies.
The course attracted in total 28 participants, mainly from small and medium sized plant breeding companies. During the morning session, participants could get familiar with Galaxy while the afternoon session was dedicated to the basics of cloud computing. The program was concluded by a presentation of Rijk Zwaan, where they rationalise their decisions for ad hoc usage of cloud computing versus further investments in their own research infrastructure.
Feedback, provided by the participants of the course, indicated that they now have a better understanding on cloud computing and can consider how cloud computing could be used in their research infrastructure. As skilled plant breeders, they now know that Galaxy can be instrumental to them in using the bioinformatics solutions developed within VLBP, without the fear of having to face a black screen with a white flashing cursor. The learned lessons will allow participants to actively participate in discussions on how to effectively disseminate VLPB developed bioinformatics solutions to their needs.