Bioinformatics cores face significant challenges, especially when running pipelines across multiple computing environments, including portability, scalability, and reproducibility issues. Nextflow, an open-source workflow manager, offers a comprehensive solution to these pain points. This talk will present the key features and advantages of Nextflow, showcasing its ability to ease the deployment and execution of bioinformatics pipelines across diverse environments, from local clusters to cloud and high-performance computing infrastructures. By leveraging Nextflow's containerisation, cloud-native design, and automated resource management, researchers and core facilities can ensure seamless pipeline execution, reduce costs, and increase collaboration. Nextflow's capabilities for automatic reports generation and quality control enable the tracking of pipeline performance and data quality, ensuring that results are reliable and reproducible. Additionally, Nextflow's flexibility and customization options allow it to respond to the needs of a diverse range of stakeholders. Further value is provided by the nf-core community, which adds standardisation and best-practice pipelines on top of Nextflow’s capabilities, as well as key accessibility features, allowing workflows to be easily executed by both experts and beginners.
We will demonstrate how Nextflow's adoption can overcome common challenges, such as environment limitations, data management, and resource allocation, ultimately accelerating scientific discovery and improving analysis services.
By providing a unified and transparent way to manage complex bioinformatics workflows, Nextflow enables bioinformatics cores to focus on their mission: delivering high-quality results and advancing scientific knowledge.