Admittedly, the reference to the Illumina-AWS link is not a major part of this story, but I have yet to find another source detailing this particular fact.

Illumina is one of the major next-gen (aka sequencing-by-synthesis or shotgun) sequencing players. The fact that they are encouraging AWS usage is remarkable for a few reasons. First, it's a testament to cloud computing's growing importance. Second, we're talking about a lot of human genetic data that may soon be traversing the network between various institutes and Amazon's servers, with all of the security and privacy consequences thereof. So, as a hacker, a medical person, and someone who uses next-gen sequencing, this is of interest to me.

(As an aside, the name "next-gen sequencing" is unfortunate; what shall we call the generation after this?)