Clouds move to clinic

Add IT service provider Connectria to the growing list of cloud computing service providers. The company's launch last week of its Private Cloud Computing offering follows a 2008 launch by its REDPLAID division.

The Connectria offering is aimed at enterprise-class customers. It will enable them to specify a custom configuration of virtualization software, servers and storage from various vendors, according to an announcement.

Cloud computing may be migrating from its natural perch in drug discovery into drug development apps. The cloud may represent the best means for tying together the myriad data sources increasingly used in clinical trials due to greater numbers of collaborations, alliances and partnerships, says Paul Papas, the Americas life sciences leader for IBM Global Business Services, in an ecliniqua item. Clinical cloud computing is "certainly more economical for companies than buying licenses for separate electronic data capture, clinical trial management, and information management systems, integrating them internally, and then redundantly paying for the same services whenever they use a clinical research organization," the article says.

By the way, if you haven't already, it's time to pay attention to cloud computing. Forrester analyst James Staten recently warned CIOs that if they ignored cloud computing, or tried to ban its use, developers in business units would simply bypass the IT department, according to an article in ComputerWeekly.

- read the Connectria release
- see the ecliniqua item
- read the ComputerWeekly article