Volition Improve Data Analysis Times by 75% with Azure and Transparity

About Volition

Multi-national epigenetics company, Volition, was founded in 2010 and is dedicated to revolutionizing the diagnosis and monitoring of life-altering diseases for both humans and animals. Volition is developing simple, cost-effective blood tests that can identify cancer and diseases associated with NETosis – such as sepsis and COVID-19 – early, even before any symptoms appear. 

The company also has a veterinary subsidiary ‘Volition Veterinary’ and recently launched the Nu.Q® Vet Cancer Test, for the detection and monitoring of systemic cancers in dogs.

Volition’s research and development activities are centered in Belgium, with an innovation laboratory and office in the U.S. and additional offices in London and Singapore.

A leader in their field, Volition is continuously growing and offering its expertise within this vital health sector.

The challenge

Volition were already using Microsoft’s Cloud platform, Azure. But, they wanted to explore potential improvements to both performance and the structure in which data was being processed. They decided they needed help from a Microsoft specialist to optimise the existing Cloud setup and data analysis. With their operations growing, they were also looking for a partner to help them with future Azure support and improvements.

After Volition attended several of our virtual events, they could see the extensive knowledge and expertise of our Azure technical team, and how we could help them moving forward. Following an in-depth assessment, we were able to quickly understand the constraints within Volition’s environment; specifically, that their existing infrastructure would not allow for jobs to be run simultaneously. 

During the discussions, we showed the team at Volition a strong understanding of their existing system and how to best update the environment to provide better flexibility and increase performance. Plus, we could offer a comprehensive, long-term support function to help with maintaining and managing the environment that Volition were looking for. This made Transparity the partner of choice for the biotech company. 

The solution

Having an existing system working on a linear model that didn’t allow for parallel jobs to be run at the same time added unnecessary time to Volition’s processes. So, we recommended the use of Azure Batch to solve the problem.

Azure Batch supports parallel jobs that need to be run at the same time, meaning they can be kept independent from each other while completing part of the overall output.  A key advantage of the parallel model with Azure Batch is that it offers the ability to scale on demand, and thus reduces the cost associated with maintaining and managing high-performance resources and complex processing machines.

With Azure licensing via our CSP program, Volition also have access to our Managed Support Service. This provides extensive support from our dedicated team of Microsoft Cloud specialists, as well as proactive monitoring of Volition’s environment should any performance issues crop up.

The outcome

Now, Volition have an optimised and high performance environment. As a result, they’ve seen a 75% improvement in data analysis times using the batch environment. So, Volition are able to now analyse their Genome sequencing far more rapidly than before, speeding up their entire processing function. Being Cloud-based also eliminates the need for continual upkeep and management.

Additionally, Transparity’s Azure Managed Service also means that Volition has a dedicated support team if they need it. The service allows the company to move forward with the knowledge that their systems are secure and taken care of. Investing in their new Azure environment also frees up time for Volition to focus on what they do best and prioritise their invaluable cancer research and test development.