Linux guru sees on-demand licensing as key to bioinformatics e-commerce sales
BioAnalyte announces that noted Open Source expert Vance Wheelock II has joined the company to consult on e-commerce solutions and to help propel the company's software licensing technology into the $8 billion analytical instruments marketplace.
Wheelock will enable the automated, on-demand creation, distribution and revenue collection for BioAnalyte's proprietary Pronets and Pepnets licenses.
The licenses permit analytical instruments users to process gigabyte datasets using BioAnalyte's Trawler products.
In 2004, BioAnalyte ProteinTrawler helped the US FDA Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition to discover a protein biomarker for a deadly food-borne bacterium similar to the one that causes cholera.
"Selling Pronets to a ProteinTrawler installation is akin to selling a hit song to an MP3 player, but with a better post-sale license strategy," said Peter Leopold, president of BioAnalyte.
"On-line theatre tickets are an expiring version of the same on-demand licensing technology.
"The costs are all about the same - under $100 - but with a Pronet you can discover a diagnostic protein biomarker".
Similar capabilities from a major server consultant such as IBM would cost tens of thousands of dollars, says BioAnalyte, but Wheelock's experience in Open Source tools will, it says, reduce overall development costs without sacrificing the technical details.
"We've known for some time that Open Source solutions are the way to go, but feasible strategies cannot be gleaned from the Open Source manuals and a few newsgroup postings," Leopold said.
"Vance's experience with on-demand web-based solutions brings us to the forefront of best practices".
The move to bolster e-commerce comes on the heels of the BioAnalyte's decision to broaden its license agreement with Positive Probability , a UK-based provider of advanced data analysis algorithms, and to sell its laboratory operations.
Wheelock, a Winthrop resident, is a 1996 computer science and mathematics graduate of the University of Maine, Farmington.
Wheelock co-founded the Maine Linux User Group in 1995, and founded the Mesda-sponsored Southern Maine Linux Users Group in 2000.
Until last autumn, Wheelock was the lead web developer for Blue Marble Geographics, a mapping software company.
"Vance's experience in global positioning systems and mapping software qualifies him to approach the enormity of the bioinformatics data problem," Leopold said.
