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Mind the Byte brings to the market iMols, the first ‘cloud’ platform specially designed for drug discovery

By 13 de June de 2013November 18th, 2020No Comments
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From left to right: T. Henriques, O. Peña, A. Nonell, M. Vendrell, J. Purroy and J.Villà at the SciCloud Conference. © PCB.
 13.06.2013

Mind the Byte brings to the market iMols, the first ‘cloud’ platform specially designed for drug discovery

Barcelona, 13 June 2013. Yesterday, as part of the 1st edition of the "Cloud Annual Scientific " (), the start-up Mind the Byte –located at the Parc Científic de Barcelona– presented , the first cloud platform in the Spanish market especially designed for drug discovery in the SaaS modality ('Software as a Service'), a system of software distribution on a pay per use basis, compared to the traditional system of distribution under license.


With this new tool, –specializing in providing cloud computing solutions for biomedical and biotechnological research– makes available to companies, universities and, public and private research groups, the ability to access intensive data processing systems and last-generation technical and scientific software applications: browsing public libraries, searching for protein and molecules, predicting activities, grouping of these into libraries and managing libraries and private proteoteques, among many other features. Regarding computing infrastructures, iMols provides basic services -such as keyword searches and molecular descriptors similarities- ‘Premium’ services, which include virtual screening to find targets for molecules, and advanced searches based on three dimensional molecular comparison techniques.

iMols follows the SaaS philosophy, according to which users can access applications and software hosted in the cloud automatically, depending on their specific needs and based on a model of consumption-based billing, ie, the payment varies depending on the use made of the contracted cloud service, which allows for scaling computing resources according to the demands of the organization and cover high demand peaks as a given number of computers and disk storage can be accessed in minutes.

The tool also ensures a safe working environment through a strict limitation of services: iMols allows to share all the information that is uploaded and managed at the platform only by team members, which prevents third parties from accessing data stored in the cloud. “Security is one of our top priorities. At iMols all the connections between the user´s computer and the site are encrypted with the same type of certificate that banks use for their online banking. The web server contains no information, it always asks a group of servers that are within an Amazon Web Services Virtual Private Cloud for the information and these servers have no direct access to the Internet “, says Alfons Novell-Canals, founder and CEO of Mind the Byte.

SciCloud, the first annual conference on science and cloud

The first edition of SciCloud (“Cloud Annual Scientific Conference”) held yesterday at the Barcelona Science Park Auditorium brought together cloud computing experts from the academic and business fields, with representatives from public and private organizations to learn, answer and discuss any issues relating to the application, design, implementation, security and provision of cloud services in the field of R & D+i in the fields of biotechnology and biomedicine.

The conference, which was attended by over 50 participants, was inaugurated by Montserrat Vendrell, CEO of Biocat and Jesus Purroy, Director of Scientific and Technology Services at the PCB and involved the participation of speakers, Jordi Villà-Freixa Director of the Polytechnic School of the University of Vic; Tiago Henriques, Engineer at Amazon Web Services; Alfons Nonell-Canals, CEO of Mind the Byte; and Oscar Huertas, Director of Technology at SOM Innovation Biotech.

SciCloud is the first annual conference specialising on science and cloud services (cloud computing), and has been organized by Mind the Byte with the help of Amazon Web Services and the Barcelona Science Park.