Arcitecta, the Australian company behind the Mediaflux platform for complex, distributed data management, is extending its global reach through an OEM agreement with SGI. 

The agreement means Arcitecta’s software (branded SGI LiveArc AE) is embedded with the new SGI InfiniteStorage Gateway range, with additional features available as add-on modules to fit the specific needs of each Big Data user.

“We believe the users dealing with complex data management problems should be driving the technology, to get the answers they need, and not be driven by it,” said Jason Lohrey, Chief Technical Officer, Arcitecta.

The combined Arcitecta and SGI solution will offer:

1. the ability to migrate information stored in files and folders to more readily accessible and searchable metadata, making searches much more effective;
2. a significant increase in performance when users ingest, analyse and share their data, reducing the time from analysis to insight; 
3. the flexibility to add modules to suit specific project requirements, such as support for geospatial data sets, video, DICOM, or the ability to search all data types across multiple SGI LiveArc AE servers (federation); and
4. the capability to manage the complete life-cycle of data from acquisition and quality assurance, controlled access and compliance through to disposal (where required).

“SGI LiveArc AE automatically categorises and catalogues the data drawn from files and folders so users can more easily pinpoint the right information each and every time they need it, using the underlying metadata to extract the gems from their vast, and often disparate, data stores.

“The selection of Arcitecta’s flexible metadata management platform supports SGI’s Big Data activity in defence, media, research, manufacturing and life sciences. All of these customers share the need to find answers to some of humanity’s most complex and pressing issues,” Mr Lohrey said.

SGI LiveArc in use in Queensland

The Queensland Centre for Medical Genomics (QCMG) within The University of Queensland’s Institute for Molecular Bioscience (IMB) has a mission to sequence and characterise pancreatic and ovarian cancer, enabling a more complete understanding of the mechanisms that lead to genetic instability and ultimately, cancer itself.

QCMG researchers use SGI LiveArc to handle the data, metadata and workflow processes in their processing pipeline. LiveArc provides the supporting framework for automated data management and storage through each step of the QCMG workflow.

The fundamental goal of the project is to use the combined resources of laboratories worldwide to create a map of the genetic changes that lead to cancer. The genetic map will act as a large information resource for medical researchers worldwide, allowing for more rapid and personal treatments for cancer sufferers in the future.

QCMG staffers have fully automated over 80% of the data and metadata capture, analysis, processing and long term archival requirements from the LIMS all the way to HPC processing and archival storage.

Quality data and metadata from the QCMG research is made available to researchers around the world to further advance the global understanding of cancer and progression to improved treatment options.