I'd make two observations:

1) Illumina/Solexa's breakthrough was to convert sequencing into a problem limited by computing resources (reassembling the jigsaw), so they were able to leverage improvements in semiconductor processing.

2) This quote grabbed me:

"But Flatley is confident that Illumina’s footprint, which includes not just machines but also the software to handle genomic data, will make the company hard to unseat."

A call to arms for the Free Software movement?