Bioinformatics hard sell

No one familiar with the current approach to drug discovery, which depends on sifting through genomic data to identify both therapeutics and targets, would dispute the need for powerful and elegant bioinformatics software to make such research possible. But it may be difficult for even the most technologically informed researcher to distinguish among the variety of bioinformatics products that have become available. And while an easy-to-use graphical interface may be essential, whether one piece of software is better than another depends on what's under the hood of the car.

For bioinformatics companies building an independent business, the challenge is to convince pharma and biotech customers that their software products not only perform as advertised and actually improve drug discovery, but also that the products are so much better than programs written internally or publicly available that they are worth paying for...