Modern biology is developing at a rapid pace. New technologies are readily being developed to increase the capacity with which we can get more and more data. As a new technology sees the light of day a niche of additional technologies, mainly computational, are built up around it to accommodate our requirements in research. However, with these new technologies we are often faced with more challenges than easy answers, and it takes time to mature each new technology and even more time until a common consensus is reached on how to deal with this technology.
As a company that offers services within the field of computational biology we are at a crossroad. Do we develop proprietary software or do we rely on open source.
We have chosen to rely on open source; our rationale can be summarized in the following points:

Open source ensures scientific integrity and reproducibility, as all details from the raw data to the final biological conclusions are open for scrutiny.

The majority of software for data analysis is offered by academia and is as such developed by experts within the field. It would be naïve to think any small company could come up with better solutions for the non-differentiated part of an analysis.

Building on open source we can guarantee that development and consulting hours are spend entirely on tailoring a solution that meet the customers needs and not on implementation of basic analyses. Hence offering differentiated solutions where we stand on the shoulders of giants.

Finally, with the rapid change in technological platforms, and auxiliary data analyses, it is unlikely that any single software package will be ready for the challenges of tomorrow. Hence we are not in the game for selling software we are selling our many years of research experience and knowledge.