Genomics in Azure

Colby T. Ford
  • ISBN 9781633439269
  • 250 pages (estimated)
Included with a Manning Online subscription
read now
We regret that we will not be publishing this title.
Look inside
Streamline genomics research using the built-in services and tools in Microsoft Azure. On this powerful cloud platform, you can scale analysis without spiraling costs, automate time-consuming tasks, and implement security and compliance planning for sensitive data.

In Genomics in Azure you will learn how to:

  • Navigate the Azure cloud environment
  • Build and organize a data lake for housing genomics data
  • Create a data warehouse for storing and querying variant data
  • Provision compute services to scale bioinformatics pipelines and machine learning
  • Apply security and compliance planning for sensitive or proprietary data

Genomics in Azure introduces an amazing collection of cloud-based tools and services that will accelerate and simplify the collection, storage, and analysis of genomics projects. Clear, hands-on guidance shows you how to work with everything from initial setup to designing a complete genomics data platform. The book is filled with unique guidance from cloud data genomics expert Colby Ford, with all recommendations and examples taken from real-life implementations he has personally engineered.


The eBook of this MEAP is currently available in PDF and liveBook. Kindle and ePub formats will be available upon the book's full publication.

about the technology

With features custom-built for scientific computing, Azure is the perfect choice for bioinformaticians looking to scale their pipelines while ensuring that their data is organized and reusable. Azure’s out-of-the-box tools can do everything from housing data to provisioning compute services! Best of all, Azure’s services for access controls, versioning, and data tracking ensure your data is traceable, transparent, and meets the requirements for the highly regulated biotech industry

about the book

Genomics in Azure teaches bioinformaticians how to create cloud-based platforms for biotech, pharmaceutical, and life sciences workloads. Enterprises worldwide use Azure’s best-in-class services to store and analyze their data. This book shows you how easy it is to use those tools for genomics research.

You’ll learn how to transfer your genomic data to the cloud and organize it for your specific needs. Go hands-on to set up large-scale bioinformatics pipelines in Databricks, and handle sequence alignment and variant calling at-scale using other Azure compute services. By the time you’re finished reading, you’ll be ready to start working and collaborating on cloud solution designs for all your research needs.

about the reader

For readers with experience working with bioinformatics data. No previous cloud experience required. This book is also useful for IT professionals looking to support a research team. For cloud-familiar IT readers, some basic understanding of the bioinformatics workflow will be beneficial.

about the author

Colby T. Ford has spent much of his professional career consulting for companies across industries, enabling them to harness the power of the cloud to do more with their data. Currently, he works as a bioinformatics cloud engineer at Seagen, an oncology biotech company. He owns Tuple, a Microsoft and Databricks partner consulting firm that focuses on building Azure solutions for genomics. He is also the co-founder of Amissa, a NSF and NIH-funded digital health company looking to use wearable devices to revolutionize caregiving and research. Colby holds a PhD in bioinformatics and computational biology and a master's degree in data science and business analytics. He teaches the graduate cloud computing course in the University of North Carolina at Charlotte's School of Data Science.