At first, or even second or third glance, DNA and computer data networks don't seem to have a whole lot in common.
But a Stanford University student's project, developing computing techniques to analyse molecular and genome sequences, has turned out to have an unlikely application - easing data traffic congestion and speeding up information across telecommunications networks.
That insight has been turned into a company, Peribit, that has rapidly picked up high-profile international clients looking for some bandwidth relief on their corporate networks. Santa Clara, California-based Peribit has also just opened its Europe, Middle East and Africa headquarters in Dublin, part of a long-term plan that may eventually see the company's research and development conducted here.
Dr Amit Singh, Peribit's co-founder and chief technology officer, was working on a PhD in the Silicon Valley university in computational molecular biology - the use of computers to find and analyse patterns in complex biological structures, such as DNA - when he thought the technique might prove useful in other fields.
"It turns out that the same idea of pattern recognition could be applied to areas outside of biology," says Dr Singh. But where? "We thought about areas in which there is a very high volume of data to be analysed - on networks."
The leap from DNA to digital packets of data on a network may seem a long one. But it was perhaps a natural progression when you realise that Dr Singh's background is in electrical engineering and computer science. And that Peribit's co-founder is Mr Balraj Singh, a former senior engineer at Intel - and his brother.
The end result is a small box that is placed at the ends of a corporate wide area network (WAN) - for example, between a main office and a branch office. The data that passes over that network goes out through the box and is compressed down - by as much as 80 to 90 per cent, says Dr Singh. It is decompressed when it passes through a receiving box at the other end of the WAN.
The boxes cost as little as €2,900 - in comparison to the cost of buying additional bandwidth for the WAN, which costs tens to hundreds of thousands of euro. There's no data loss either, he says.
The technology - which the company calls molecular sequence reduction, or MSR - is a kind of shorthand. The technology looks for sequences of data of any size within data packets and replaces a long sequence with a short symbol. The program "creates a dictionary, if you will, of the phrases most commonly used in the data traffic", says Dr Singh. Up to 90 per cent of all data traffic carried across networks is repetitive, he adds. Tests carried out by Network World magazine, which gave Peribit its top award for a software product, produced compression rates of as high as eight to one, averaging 4.6 to one.
Several Irish companies are already using the product, including De Beers in Shannon, but the company hopes to boost the number after announcing a partnership this week with Irish service provider LAN Communications. Other European clients include Astrium, Tate & Lyle, Lego and Liebherr, while US clients include Chevron/Texaco, Sears, Nortel, EMC, Raytheon and GE.
Mr Shane Buckley, the Irish-born president of EMEA operations for Peribit, says the company has a small sales force in Dublin at the moment but adds: "This is not just a sales operation."
Dublin will be Peribit's EMEA headquarters, starting as a sales base but expanding to include a call centre for EMEA customer support, probably based out of Dublin as well, says Mr Buckley.
The final phase, he hopes, will be software development. He notes that Peribit's chief executive, Mr Jef Graham, was (like Mr Buckley) a vice-president at 3Com and helped drive 3Com's expansion into the Republic. That experience led both to believe that the State would be "an ideal location for our business", says Mr Buckley. "We have a small operations team now, and will be recruiting as and when necessary," he adds.
Overall, the company voices a firm, post-dotcom mantra of careful growth, tight budget management and fiscal caution. "We're a new technology company with old, traditional company principles," argues Mr Buckley.
Because the technology behind their product was worked out early on, Peribit doesn't have high software development overheads at present, adds Dr Singh. The company has raised €31 million in funding - the second round completed last February in under six weeks, with prominent Silicon Valley venture firms Accel Partners, Mayfield and Foundation Capital. That's sufficient funding to take them to their eventual public offering, Dr Singh adds, an unusual statement these days when "IPO" has become the company goal that dare not speak its name.
As for keeping the business all in the family, Dr Singh says he's happy working with his brother. Isolated from the rest of their family in India, the two spent much time together anyway in California.
"We got to understand each other pretty well." He laughs. "We know each other's boundaries."
