Cloud Computing and Biotech

A lot of pharmaceutical and biotech companies require a large IT infrastructure to handle the amount of data a biotech produces, which at times, can be daunting. Experimental data, patents, complex biochemical applications all require computer usage, which can be costly for a company (buying servers, hiring IT staff, upkeep, etc.). However, some larger companies like Eli Lilly and Pfizer are looking to cut those costs with cloud computing. Cloud computing basically offsets any worlkload that a computer might do locally to a server offsite. This way, a company doesnt have to worry about IT maintanace and can focus on research. Cloud computing is actually pretty affordable and scalable too. Now that larger biotechs have adopted cloud computing, can this market penetrate into low and mid-level biotechs?

Scientists and Investors Clash with C.E.O.'s

A new article in the Wall Street Journal talks about the next sector to be hit by "Bonus hungry CEO's"...Biotechnology. After the banking, auto-industry, and hedge-fund sectors fell to much public scrutiny for its bordering-on-insane executive bonuses, investors are looking at some executive payouts for Biotechnology, and seeing the same trends. The WSJ article even talks about some executive payouts for small pharmaceutical companies that representeded over 10% of the companies market-cap. Shouldnt these companies be spending the vast majority of their money on R&D, and less on executive bonuses and marketing? Check out the full article, and tell us what you think. Do these executives deserve these payouts, or is it a load of BS? [Link]

Slumdog Chemist

Heres an article that is pretty inspirational. Guy come from India, gets his PhD, works as a chemist for 6 years while scrimping and saving everything he has, and decides on a whim one day that hell crack open a phone book to buy a 3 person chemical company so that he can build the company up. That 3 person company is now Chemair, a Chemical manafacturing company that employs 350 people. Oh and about the title, the guys from India, its a sort of rags to riches tale, so I tried forever to come up with a clever title. This is all I could come up with. You know...like the movie? Ok, forget it, just check out the Article. [Article]

Even Doctors can be bought...

Apparently an ex-army Doctor has been accused of accepting an $800,000 bribe from Medtronic (a medical device company) for fudging experimental data to help Medtronic sell one of their spine products. Interestingly enough, this is NOT the first time Medtronic has been accused of shady practice. There is even a whole website devoted to lawsuits for Medtronic products. My question is, how often do you think this kind of stuff happens amongst the scientific community that we havent found out about yet? Article

Biotech's Merger Madness!

So just in case you haven't heard, basically every Biotech company has been bought out by a larger Biotech. Ok lets see how many i can come up with off the top of my head...Roche bought Ventana which bought Spring Bioscience, Thermo merged with Fisher Scientific (and managed to buy Lab Vision somewhere along the line), Leica bought Novacastra, i mean, the list goes on. My question is, i just read a Wired article on"The New Economy" that is supposed to arrive after this recession is over, and it talks about how in the future the most profitable and successful companies will be those that ha ve a niche market. Does that mean these ultra-huge biotechs that are emerging are doomed? Is the era of corporate Pac-man over?