Microsoft Corp. today said that it’s partnering with Alphabet Inc.’s Verily unit to integrate its Azure cloud services into Verily’s Terra biomedical data platform, which supports the work of thousands of researchers worldwide.

Azure competes with the public cloud of Verily sister company Google LLC. That Microsoft and Verily will nonetheless work together in this market is the latest sign of the industry’s growing adoption of the multicoud operating model. 

Verily’s Terra platform was developed through a collaboration between the Alphabet unit and the Broad Institute, a medical research organization backed by MIT and Harvard. Terra enables scientists to share biomedical datasets with one another for projects. Terra also allows scientists to analyze those datasets using popular open-source tools.

The partnership with Microsoft has several components. At the technical level, the companies said that they will expand Terra’s feature set with the “addition of the Microsoft Azure cloud, data and AI technologies.” Microsoft corporate vice president Gregory Moore elaborated in a statement that “we will apply the power of Microsoft Azure and its enterprise-grade capabilities in security and privacy, along with cutting-edge data and AI solutions like Azure Synapse Analytics, Azure Machine Learning and Azure Cognitive Services.”

Azure Synapse Analytics is a data warehousing service that can analyze petabytes of information. That kind of scalability is useful for the healthcare use cases Verily’s Terra platform targets, since biomedical analytics projects often use large files such as X-ray images. Azure Machine Learning and Cognitive Services, the other offerings mentioned by Microsoft’s Moore in the context of the Verily deal, provide ready-made AI features for tasks such as image recognition and features for building custom AI models, respectively.

The partnership announcement also mentions enabling “authenticated access to distributed data stores” as a goal. That could mean the companies might be looking at integrating Terra with Azure’s managed database offerings to help store researchers’ files.

“Terra simplifies the process so researchers can analyze and share data they have generated, and access and analyze data others have made available without needing to duplicate datasets,” said Eric Lander, the president of the Broad Institute, which worked with Verily to develop Terra. The Broad Institute is also participating in the new partnership with Microsoft. 

Beyond helping to enhance the platform, Microsoft will work on “increasing Terra’s accessibility” to the 168,000-plus health and life sciences partners it has worldwide. Having easier access to that ecosystem could boost Verily’s and the Broad Institute’s efforts to widen industry adoption of Terra. The more scientists adopt the platform, the more useful it can become as a tool for research collaboration.

Verily has reportedly used Google Cloud to power Terra until now. The unit’s decision to use Azure adds it to the growing list of organizations adopting a multicloud approach in their operations. The approach is being employed by Google as well.

In November, Google Cloud Chief Executive Officer Thomas Kurian outlined the unit’s vision for an “open cloud” model that gives customers “options to build, migrate and deploy their applications across multiple environments.” The unit has introduced multiple services across several categories to make it easier for enterprises to implement that approach.

Photo: Verily