Microsoft’s (NASDAQ:MSFT) Windows Azure has embedded National Centre for Biotechnology Information’s BLAST tool for rapid searching through billons of genetic bases. BLAST or Basic Local Alignment Search Tool is used to find similarities between two genes which can help in finding diseases, species differentiation and other comparisons. Windows Azure uses the power of cloud computing to drastically increase the power required for biological research.
Microsoft demonstrated at the Supercomputing 2010 conference the power of scalability. Azure breezes through the entire NCBI database which calls for more than 100 billion comparisons. This will be useful for scientists, students and companies which are deep into genetic research such as Genzyme (NASDAQ:GENZ), Celera corporation (NASDAQ:CRA), and many more.