The software package ARB and the SILVA rRNA gene databases
More than 10,000 estimated users worldwide of the freely available ARB software package for (phylogenetic) sequence analysis require an adequate support infrastructure to cope with their manifold requirements. In 2005, Ribocon has taken over this responsibility on a professional level, based on many years of close collaboration with the ARB development team at the TU Munich.
Ribocon offers extended professional solutions & services for ARB/SILVA users:
Automatic Linux plus ARB Installation DVD 4.0
In case of additional support requirements please contact 
arb(at)ribocon.com
The Ribocon team has a strong background in microbial diversity analysis, phylogenetic reconstruction and probe design, and we are highly experienced with usage of the ARB software, also on the system level. Plus, we actively participate in its development and maintenance and we are partner of the SILVA rRNA gene database project.
What is ARB/SILVA?
ARB (latin, "arbor" = tree) is a free, fully-integrated package of cooperating software tools for the classification and phylogenetic analysis of any kind of sequence data, as well as for the design of high-quality molecular probes.
ARB is under continuous development at the TU Munich in the group of Dr. Wolfgang Ludwig (
www.arb-home.de) since more than 15 years.
With more than 2,700 citations (as of December 2012) since publication in NAR in 2004 ( Nuc. Acids Res. 2004; Vol. 32, No. 4, p.1363-1371), ARB represents a "blockbuster" among the scientific software tools.
SILVA (latin, = forest) represent the official ribosomal RNA databases of the ARB project since January 2007. They are free for academic use.
SILVA ( www.arb-silva.de) was initiated by the group of Prof. Dr. Frank Oliver Glöckner at the MPI in Bremen in cooperation with Ribocon and published in late 2007 ( Nuc. Acids Res. 2007; Vol. 35, No. 21, p. 7188-7196).