IBM Helps Distributors Leverage Lucrative Life-Sciences Space

The programs the distributors have developed include readiness assessment, opportunity identification, marketing, certifications and ISV partnering.

"It's all with the intention of leveraging an emerging marketplace and maximizing investments in storage, software and systems integration expertise," said Scott Abbott, vice president of business development at Avnet Hall-Mark's IBM business unit.

Last April, IBM helped Arrow's Support Net unit launch the Life Sciences Partner Enablement program for solution providers.

"Arrow is committed to a leadership role in helping IBM resellers size up the tremendous life-sciences opportunity," said Eric Williams, executive vice president of Indianapolis-based Support Net.

According to research firm IDC, the life-sciences market, which includes pharmaceuticals, agriculture and biotechnology, is estimated to grow to $38 billion worldwide by 2006 from $12.7 billion in 2001, a 24 percent compounded annual growth rate. And there are about 1,500 biotech companies in the United States alone, said sources at Cap Gemini Ernst and Young.

"We think hot areas are storage, high-performance computing, and knowledge and database management," Abbott said. Solution providers will focus on consulting, customized software development and systems integration, he said.

The life-sciences market is a key focus for IBM, which has its own business unit to address that space. IBM and the distributors have made investments in life sciences, and solution providers must do the same to succeed, Abbott said.

"There's a financial investment, but also an intellectual investment and the ability to do something different," he said. "A lot of partners know storage already, and they have talented WebSphere and Tivoli developers. They know how to build local- and wide-area networks. The difference is talking genomes and biotech languages."

Breaking into the field often requires specialized assistance, Abbott added.

"[Solution providers are probably going to have to add resources,a consultant that knows the space or a project manager or a sales consultant that can talk the language," he said. "We're trying to reduce their costs and help them go from standing still to a crawl, to walking, to running, then galloping. We bring methodologies and campaigns.

We assist from a demand-generation standpoint. We make sure they attend the right conferences."

MSC Software, a Santa Ana, Calif.-based solution provider, has found a niche helping life-sciences companies build and use scientific-based computer clusters, said Jay Clark, director of marketing and business development.

The company developed MSC.LIFE, an API that allows nonparallel programs to run parallel without changing the underlying source code, Clark said.

The first application MSC Software targeted was BLAST (basic linear alignment search technique), which searches strings in genetic libraries over a cluster of computers.

"By comparing those strings, we can possibly determine what that genetic string does. It's [a process used in drug discovery," Clark said. "For example, you can compare results in a tomato genome. If you know what [a specific string does in a tomato, you can estimate what it will do in other genomes."

Genetic strings require huge amounts of storage, which is a big reason storage products are critical components of life-sciences systems, said distributors. Storage, in fact, accounts for about 30 percent of the life-sciences IT market, according to IDC.

"Even if it was a simple technique, accessing the data is quite time-consuming," Clark said. "The idea behind our solution is if I wanted to give you the information, I'd do it much like an FM radio. Each person that tunes in to that frequency can get that information live."

Avnet Hall-Mark has helped MSC with operations, IBM with marketing, Clark said. "They grease the skids in a lot of ways to help the initial sale through shipping and customer satisfaction, making it much easier for us," he said.