Diet LIMS for Small Labs “Small is beautiful” is a popular quote. But did you know that being small in business is double jeopardy? Of course, most of us know. Being small in the laboratory business is no different. There is always threat from the large competing labs. The larger labs constantly push their smaller rivals with velocities sufficient enough to drive them out from the realms of profitability and eventually, even beyond the threshold of existence.
Data Migration As the IT industry matures, companies are starting to realize the benefits of having a standardized approach to IT. This includes the use of common applications within a business sector. These applications can be a new application entirely for the company or an upgrade of one of a number of existing products in place. When a company decides to go down the path of standardization there are a number of things that need to be considered. One of the most important issues that a company needs to consider is the question of what to do with legacy data. Depending on the type of application, legacy data may or may not be required. In the LIMS world, foreseeable situations exist where the answer to the legacy data question is both! The question is then – migrate the data to the new system or warehouse the data? I will explain some of the considerations that should come into play when making this decision.
The IT department's contribution to your LIMS implementation Does this image represent the contribution of your IT department to your LIMS implementation?
Open Source Beer vs. Open Source LIMS; which one do you prefer? A year ago, some enterprising lads at the IT University of Copenhagen released a recipe of beer under the Creative Commons license. Because of the license, anybody that made money from selling the beer would need to give them credit and publish any changes to the recipe under a similar license. It was a novel idea and got some press from both the Open Source and the beer brewing communities. But just like many applications in the Open Source world, getting an Open Source beer recipe is the first (and usually easiest) step in a long, involved, sometimes unpleasant, process. And I hope that anybody making Open Source anything takes criticism really well....
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