GenomeVIP platform. GenomeVIP consists of three components (web browser, server host, cloud), coordinated by various scripting languages (blue) and cloud toolkits (green). Interactive web pages, written in HTML (with CSS elements) and JavaScript, provide front-end functionality. JQuery is a JavaScript library providing methods to modify web page content with cross-browser compatibility. Server-side PHP modules utilize StarCluster and S3 Tools cloud toolkits to access EC2 Compute (gray) and storage resources (yellow) in the cloud. GenomeVIP creates within EC2 a virtual cluster, based on a machine image with preinstalled variant detection tools and supporting software (collectively, “Genomics Tools”) (red), that can access sequence data on S3 and EBS (Elastic Block Storage) resources (yellow). Secure channels using HTTPS and secure shell (SSH) protocols allow communication between various components. Resulting variant call files stored in S3 are accessible via the GenomeVIP interface or the Amazon S3 Console.