Case Study: Daffodil Centre advances cancer research with Microsoft Azure

Cancer Council and the Daffodil Centre accelerate research in the cloud to save lives

The Daffodil Centre, a joint venture between Cancer Council NSW and the University of Sydney, needed a faster, more secure way to run complex cancer research models. Its modelling team had been limited by on-premises legacy infrastructure, with only 48 virtual machines to share, long wait times for access, and frequent maintenance and security patching issues. Microsoft Azure was introduced to help remove those bottlenecks and speed up research.

Using Microsoft Azure, the Daffodil Centre worked with cubesys to build a prostate cancer model with Azure Batch and Azure DevOps automation. The move cut model runtime from about a week to half a day, enabled parallel runs, reduced manual scheduling, and lowered administrative overhead. The scalable Azure environment also allowed secure remote work and pay-as-you-use efficiency, helping the organisation react faster to policy questions and support its mission more effectively.

Daffodil Centre

Michael Caruana

Senior Research Fellow