Bio-IT World Brief | The Broad Institute will release version 4 of the industry-leading Genome Analysis Toolkit under an open source software license. It is available currently as an alpha preview on the Broad Institute’s GATK website, with a beta release expected in mid-June.

Bio-IT World Brief | The tranSMART Foundation and IBM today announced their collaboration and the general availability of the tranSMART platform (version 16.2) on IBM Power8 servers. The translational research platform is running on IBM Power8 servers at the tranSMART Foundation’s Center of Excellence at the University of Michigan.

Bio-IT World Brief | Cray and Markley have announced a partnership to provide supercomputing as a service solutions that combine the power of Cray supercomputers with the premier hosting capabilities of Markley.

Bio-IT World Contributed Commentary | The increasing growth of research technologies and digital data is straining today’s IT infrastructure with changes in the lab happening so fast that the infrastructure must not only meet today’s needs, but also have flexibility for an uncertain tomorrow.

Bio-IT World | Seven Bridges’ new Chief Communications Officer gives an update on the Seven Bridges Cancer Genomics Cloud and some hints at how lessons learned in the public arena are powering Seven Bridges’ private business.

Bio-IT World News Brief | Synthego today announced new online CRISPR tools that make accessible over 100,000 genomes for free, fast, and easy world-class target design. Consisting of a guide designer and a design validator, Synthego’s software addresses gaps in the CRISPR design process, and allows both sophisticated and novice researchers to reduce the time it takes to create optimal designs from hours to minutes.