Table 3 User classes of open source bioinformatics platforms and main reasons why they will be interested in the platforms.

Software programmers

Convenient tools and utilities for creating new modules

Ready to use libraries of classes for working with main bioinformatics and system biology objects (e.g. sequences, genes, networks, etc.)

Ready integration with all main databases that are needed for working with new modules

Ability to upload personal modules to the platform and set the policy of their licensing (free, or commercial through an application store)

Bioinformaticians

Convenient unified environment that combines a variety of programs and algorithms in different ways, which may become necessary for the analysis of different data from laboratory tests

Unified interface for all modules of the platform that eases the training process of the end users

Convenient system that can use several programming languages and statistical packages for the creation of scripts, which bioinformaticians can prepare for their further usage in processing of large amounts of routine data

Convenient system for construction of work procedures for automatic execution of a given sequence of programs; after their creation, the obtained procedures are passed to end users for automated processing of new data

Biologists and medical chemists

Availability of a large number of ready-to-use modules on different branches of bioinformatics, system biology and computer aided drug modelling

User-friendly interfaces

Ability of creation of personalized structured data repository "in the cloud", with data of different origins (e.g. transcriptomics, proteomics, etc.)

Ability to provide reproducible research

Ready-to-use operating procedures for automatic execution of given sequences of programs that can answer dedicated biological questions