It is a major challenge for the scientific and clinical research communities to efficiently access, aggregate and mine complex scientific data across an enterprise organisation. Accelrys, Inc. leverages its advanced computational, informatics, and platform technologies to create Scientific Business Intelligence solutions. These solutions empower organisations to make better informed decisions with the aid of business intelligence software that can truly handle complex types of scientific data. CMO Rohit Shyam: “Most competitors can only analyse and understand text and numbers. We can give insight from a large variety of data.”
Accelrys’ experience goes back 25 years. During that period the company has built up expertise and intellectual property through serving research organisations with modelling and simulation, bioinformatics, cheminformatics, and middleware technology.
There have been a number of name and organisational changes since Accelrys was founded. The company took on its current form in 2001, when five specialist companies were brought together: Molecular Simulations, Synopsys Scientific Systems, Oxford Molecular, the Genetics Computer Group, and Synomics. In 2004, Accelrys acquired SciTegic. These companies, in turn, had combined a total of 17 software companies over the previous decade, many of them startups
from leading academic institutes.
By successfully harnessing disparate data
sources and software applications,
organisations position themselves to
apply their data in an intelligent, focused
manner, thereby improving productivity,
decision making and research efficiency.
However, such efficiencies have eluded
many scientific and clinical research
organisations because traditional
business intelligence (BI) technologies
cannot handle advanced scientific data
processing and analysis. This lack of a
readily available BI solution has forced
organisations to make do with vendorspecific
solutions, drain in-house
development resources by building
customised solutions, or struggle with
sharing data among incompatible point
products.
Accelrys’ Scientific Business Intelligence
solutions can handle the complex types of
data and analyses required by the
scientific and clinical research
organisations. The solutions are built
around proven technologies for modelling,
simulation and informatics, as well as an
open and enterprise-enabled, plug-andplay
scientific operating platform that can
unite diverse applications and databases.
“Our business analytics is scientifically
aware. Most competitors can only analyse
and understand text and numbers. We
can give insight from a large variety of
data. In addition to text and numbers, it
could be images, biological sequences,
chemical structures, and any combination
of that. We have the ability to rapidly pull
that data, apply high-end analytics to it
and then visualise that data, so that the
user can make better decisions faster,”
says Mr. Shyam, who has served as Vice
President Corporate Development and
Strategy since October 2007. In February
2008, he was promoted and given the
additional responsibilities to head
Accelrys’ Marketing.
Most of Accelrys’ revenue is generated by
Life Sciences customers. Accelrys provides
targeted scientific software products
throughout the drug discovery and
development process, along with
platform technologies that lets customers
integrate best-of-breed solutions and that
help the flow of data, information, and
knowledge through the process. Together
with Accelrys services, these products and
technologies create solutions for
individual stages within the drug
discovery and development process, and for the pharmaceutical and biotech
enterprise as a whole.
In addition the Scientific Business
Intelligence software and solutions are
used by clients in the Energy, Chemicals,
Aerospace, and Consumer Packaged
Goods industries, including many Fortune
500 companies. “Our customers include
19 of the top 20 pharmaceutical
companies. Traditionally we only worked
in Life Sciences, but in the last few years
we’ve seen major growth in other
verticals. Companies like Toyota, Procter
& Gamble, and Boeing are now also
using our solutions,” says Mr. Shyam.
The Accelrys platform combined with
predictive science tools helps clients
conduct experiments in-silico, and make
informed decisions in real-time, and
reduces engineering, development, and
discovery times for new product
development. “We structure unstructured
data, not many companies are able to
do that.”
Accelrys’ primary products include
Materials Studio™, Discovery Studio™,
SciTegic Enterprise Server and Accord.
The latest release is that of Materials
Studio™ 4.3, the newest version of the
company’s materials modelling and simulation platform. Materials Studio™
4.3 enables multiscale modelling by
introducing new functionality in the
areas of quantum mechanics and
mesoscale modelling. Accelrys continues
its partnership with Cambridge
Crystallographic Data Centre (CCDC) by
enhancing computational predictions
with experimental results to create
decision support tools in the area of
molecular crystallization.
Materials Studio™ now extends the
capabilities that have been limiting
researchers in solving real-world
problems. Materials Studio™ ONETEP
can model large systems with thousands
of atoms fully quantum mechanically,
providing unprecedented accuracy for
systems of this size. Materials Studio™
ONETEP is able to scale calculations
across hundreds of CPUs, making
efficient use of computational resources.
QMERA, a hybrid technology, enables
researchers to combine quantum and
molecular mechanics in a single
calculation for the prediction of structural,
thermodynamic, and electronic properties
up to an order of magnitude faster than
traditional quantum calculations without
compromising accuracy.
Mesotek is a next-generation field-based
mesoscale application enabling users to
increase the complexity of systems that
can be modelled in the fields of
nanomaterials, molecular crystals,
polymers and organic chemistry.
Materials Studio™ Mesotek provides a
coarse-grained approach that allows the
combination of soft and hard materials
in a single calculation.
Motif, a tool for polymorph prediction,
interfaces with CCDC’s Mercury software
to extract hydrogen bond information
from the Cambridge Structural Database.
Materials Studio™ Motif allows for a
knowledge-based approach to categorise and rank crystal structures predicted by
Materials Studio™ Polymorph, and takes
an important step towards in-silico
crystal engineering efforts.
Accelrys also recently extended the
capabilities of SciTegic Enterprise Server,
the premier platform for the integration,
analysis, and reporting of scientific data.
The new release enhances the enterprise
scalability, security, and deployment
capabilities required by informatics
professionals in the pharmaceutical,
biotechnology, and chemicals industries.
Key features of the new release, which
is the next generation of the highly
successful Pipeline Pilot platform,
include a service oriented architecture
environment, enterprise collaborative
tools, interactive application building,
and workflow parallelisation. “This is the
first time we are taking the product to
enterprise level. It used to be sold
mainly to departments,” says Mr. Shyam.
Accelrys demonstrated SciTegic
Enterprise Server 7.0 at the BioIT World
Conference held in Boston last April.
“We presented together with HP,
Microsoft and Agilent to show
integration of the platform with
technologies from those companies.”
Strategic alliances play an important role
in helping Accelrys provide industryleading
Scientific Business Intelligence
solutions to a growing number of diverse
industries. The company works with
systems integrators, technology partners,
scientific collaborators, OEM partners,
and independent software vendors.
Accelrys is planning to increase its
partnerships with OEMs to extend the
use of its platform. One OEM Accelrys is
already partnering with is Agilent
Technologies, the world’s premier
measurement company and a technology
leader in communications, electronics,
life sciences and chemical analysis. The
company’s 19,000 employees serve
customers in more than 110 countries.
Agilent had net revenues of USD 5.4
billion in 2007.
Accelrys and Agilent entered into an
agreement to allow Agilent to distribute
an embedded version of Accelrys’
SciTegic Enterprise Server with Agilent
OpenLAB software solution. Accelrys and
Agilent entered into a comprehensive
resale agreement last autumn, which
covers the breadth of both companies’
informatics portfolios. As part of the
agreement, Accelrys offers Agilent’s
OpenLAB Enterprise Content Manager,
Kalabie Electronic Lab Notebook, and
GeneSpring (a gene expression solution).
Agilent offers Accord cheminformatics
solutions and Pipeline Pilot Scientific
Operating Platform solutions.
The OEM agreement allows Accelrys to
continue to enhance the broad range of
Scientific Business Intelligence solutions
to its chemical and pharmaceutical
customers and introduce SciTegic
Enterprise Server into Agilent markets
including laboratory informatics, QA/QC
and manufacturing.
