The tradeoff when leveraging cloud computing is control, and you have to dial-in the risk of losing access to your PaaS provider.

FORBES: ROI of the Cloud, Part 1: PaaS

In the work of NCBI Staff Scientist and genomics expert Martin Shumway, distilling these large volumes of raw sequencing data requires more sophisticated computing algorithms, intensive quality control and indexing for online searchability by the science community.

FORBES: Bringing the Human Genome Into the Doctor's Office

If Amazon does participate, says Forrester research analyst James Staten, the company will likely use its heft in the cloud computing industry to assert control over the standard and shape it to Amazon's current services.

FORBES: Bridging The Clouds