Industries across the board today are facing the challenge of integrating cutting-edge technologies with established infrastructures. Companies are bringing together different data systems using data unification solutions to simplify work while staying flexible to new ideas.

One company navigating this challenge is Illumina Inc., which operates in the genomics space. The company has grown rapidly over the past couple of years and has had to move quickly to get things out the doors, according to Stephen Horn, staff data engineer with Illumina.

Stephen Horn, staff data engineer with Illumina, talks with theCUBE about data unification solutions and AI’s role in driving innovation in the life science field.

“A lot of the problems we started finding right away when we moved too quick sometimes, is we had a lot of different environments,” Horn said. “We had a lot of unique lab softwares, and within those lab softwares, they had their own operation system [and] they had their own databases.”

Horn spoke with theCUBE Research’s Bob Laliberte and co-host Rebecca Knight at the Cloudera Evolve24 event during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed data unification solutions to streamline operations and the role of AI in driving innovation within the life sciences industry. (* Disclosure below.)

Data unification solutions aim for efficiency

As Illumina grew as a company, it was trying to be more proactive with its data, according to Horn. That involved being able to look back and see what improvements and automation were possible.

“Not just for our customers, but internally within ourselves …,” he said. “When you’re trying to cross all that data between one server to another software to another software, you can imagine that was a bit of a headache. What we did with Cloudera was [ask], ‘How do we still allow the uniqueness of our software?’ We have a lot of software, ranging from synthetic chemistry all the way down to semiconductor engineering.”

The partnership with Cloudera Inc. allowed Illumina to not only pull data from the cloud, but also from some of the company’s own on-premises lab software, according to Horn. That solution allowed the company to unify these sources into one singular data repository.

“That way, anyone who wanted to analyze that data, from a semiconductor space, all the way to a synthetic chemistry space, they’re ultimately able to grab that data from one place,” he said.

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE Research’s coverage of the Cloudera Evolve24 event:

(* Disclosure: Cloudera Inc. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither Cloudera nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE