The HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology, a non-profit genomics organization, built one of the world’s first end-to-end medicine programs with the mission to diagnose rare diseases. The Institute’s work demands a data-driven information technology infrastructure that can handle the genomics applications and algorithms needed for accelerated research.

HudsonAlpha relies on Hewlett Packard Enterprise Inc. to provide the necessary compute power for its complicated work. This has required one of its thought leaders to solve a number of complex developer operations problems, which has resulted in a decision to go all-in with the development community.

“We have turned our IT department into developers. It’s an important first step to be able to really leverage the type of infrastructure that HPE offers,” said Katreena Mullican (pictured, left), senior architect and cloud whisperer at HudsonAlpha.

Mullican visited the set of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, and spoke with co-hosts Dave Vellante (@dvellante) and Peter Burris (@plburris) during the HPE Discover EU event in Madrid, Spain. She was joined by Said Syed (pictured, right), director of hybrid cloud product management, developer experience strategy and solutions engineering at HPE. They discussed how HudsonAlpha uses HPE’s platform, the launch of a new developer portal, and the need for collaboration in software development. (* Disclosure below.)

Need for modernization in IT operations

With nearly 20 faculty investigators conducting genomics research and more than 100 data scientists and engineers, HudsonAlpha uses the HPE Synergy composable infrastructure platform to bridge modern and traditional applications. The institute also felt it was important to modernize its IT operation in ways that would leverage new skill sets needed for effective DevOps.

“It’s not your traditional system administration, just keep an eye on a server,” Mullican explained. “It is asking [people with] IT traditional roles to step up and learn a new skill set, which is not easy.”

To facilitate dialog among new and experienced developers, HPE recently launched its Developer Community Portal during the KubeCon 2017 event. It’s a place where developers can address complex problems through collaboration with other coders.

With the increasing emphasis on software development tools to run enterprise applications, HPE and HudsonAlpha are seeking to leverage the power of developer collaboration for mission-critical IT needs.

“Trying to organize your workforce around a software development mindset versus an infrastructure administration mindset is a huge ordeal,” Syed said. “Every software platform or every software solution that we launch, like OneSphere, will be API-driven right from the start, partner-driven and developer-centric. That’s how we measure success.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the HPE Discover EU event. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the HPE Discover EU event. Neither Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co., the event sponsor, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE