Exostar, a Herndon, Va.-based provider of secure, cloud-based solutions that improve collaboration, information sharing and supply chain management for communities of partners, has become a specialist member of the BT for Life Sciences partner ecosystem. Exostar’s secure identity and access management (IAM) and enterprise federation solutions now can be paired with BT’s Workbench Informatics solution for scientists.

BT for Life Sciences provides cloud-based solutions that enable customers to do better, faster science, radically reducing the time required for the R&D process. BT’s Workbench Informatics solution brings together key applications and datasets, presented in a way that makes it easy for the scientist to launch virtual compute environments. This simplifies predictive simulations, allowing them to run faster and shortening the R&D discovery process. The service brings flexibility, including cost-effective pay-as-you-go and ramp up/ramp down options.

With the Exostar IAM solution as a secure access point, BT’s life sciences customers now can utilize a virtual scientist’s workbench in the cloud and collaborate with hundreds of partners and third-party applications throughout the Exostar life sciences community.

The platform also will provide heightened security for user information and intellectual property, ensuring organizations and individuals now can collaborate with confidence when sensitive and valuable information is involved. Exostar’s Life Sciences Identity Hub is a scalable solution where asset owners maintain control over access, which the Identity Hub enforces while offering individuals a single sign-on user experience.

Yury Rozenman, head of business development, life sciences for BT Global Services, said, “By connecting BT’s Workbench Informatics and other BT for Life Sciences solutions to the Exostar Life Sciences Identity Hub, companies can leverage access to a robust, global collaboration environment without compromising security.”

Exostar currently has more than 12,000 users, 550 organizations, seven federated organizations and 18 federated applications in its life sciences community. Exostar is experiencing rapid growth in life sciences global collaboration, with member organizations including Merck, AstraZeneca and MedImmune, along with their CRO, academic, laboratory and investigator partners.