GenoLogics, a provider of laboratory information management system (LIMS) software specifically designed for complex genomics labs, has announced that it signed a worldwide co-selling agreement with Illumina, a next-generation sequencing (NGS) instrument company. Under terms of the deal, Illumina will market a version of the Geneus LIMS that is pre-configured for Illumina’s NGS instruments and TruSeq sample preparation kits.

The pre-configured Geneus LIMS software will enable Illumina’s NGS customers to accelerate implementations, track library preparations and instrument runs, and prepare basic reports in a matter of weeks, rather than months. Illumina sells its HiSeq and Genome Analyzer sequencing platforms and TruSeq sample preparation kits to genomics labs in academic institutions and commercial companies worldwide.

“We are pleased to announce this strategic agreement with our partner Illumina, and we look forward to serving our joint customers as they initiate their next-generation sequencing research,” said GenoLogics Chief Executive Officer Michael Ball. “This agreement follows an earlier preferred partner agreement that has allowed us to work closely with Illumina on LIMS software that is complementary to their hardware and sample prep kits. This enables next-generation sequencing labs to deploy instrumentation and data management solutions simultaneously.”

Driven by an increase in sequencing time and a decrease in cost, the NGS market is expected to more than double, from $600 million in 2009 to $1.5 billion in 2014 (Scientia Advisors / Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News). Yet, while researchers are gaining valuable knowledge from the massive amounts of data produced by NGS, they generally lack the information management technology to manage and analyze that data. In a recent survey by J.P. Morgan, 63 percent of NGS laboratory directors surveyed said that data storage, data management and informatics are the biggest hurdles to expanding next-generation sequencing.