created by Geraldine_VdAuwera
on 2015-06-24
It’s an exciting week here at GATK HQ because we finally get to tell you about this very cool project we’ve been working on: today, Broad and Google announced plans to make [GATK available as a service on Google Cloud Platform](https://cloud.google.com/genomics/gatk) as part of [Google Genomics](https://cloud.google.com/genomics/)!
Our goal with this project is to enable researchers around the world to run the latest version of the GATK Best Practices pipeline without the hassle of figuring out the plumbing or storing huge amounts of genomic data locally. The initial alpha rollout will be limited to a small set of users. Based on our experience supporting the GATK user community, we think this will dramatically lower the barriers to top-notch genomic analysis capabilities, especially for researchers who don’t have access to the kind of dedicated compute infrastructure and engineering teams required for analyzing genomic data at scale.
Rest assured, if you’re the do-it-yourselfer type, the DIY GATK option is still here; you’ll still be able to download the latest version of GATK from the Broad website, set it up on your own system and run it locally. We will continue documenting and supporting this option with the same level of dedication as ever.
You can read more about the details in the [Broad Institute press release](http://www.broadinstitute.org/news/6994) and on the [Google Cloud Platform blog](http://googlecloudplatform.blogspot.com/). Feel free to ask questions in the comments thread of course. We’ll keep you posted here as we move forward.
From yugusev on 2015-06-30
Hi Geraldine – could you please comment on how one could get access to the initial alpha rollout?
thanks!
From ebanks on 2015-07-01
Hi yugusev,
The Alpha test is already underway with a limited group of users. Please reach out to Google Genomics at cloud.google.com/genomics/gatk and sign up to request access for when we move into the beta release.
Thanks for your interest!