Out of all of the industries in which the cloud has grown in popularity over the last several years, perhaps none have benefited more than the pharmaceutical industry. Pharmaceutical companies need to be particularly vigilant when selecting a cloud provider to not only make sure that they realize the maximum benefits from their investment, but also to help ensure they’re in a better position to adequately address the industry-specific challenges that they face.
Scalability
One of the biggest challenges that pharmaceutical companies face is their aging physical infrastructure and the constant need to ramp up or ramp down certain requirements to better service their operations as a whole. The challenge is that resource requirements can fluctuate wildly, meaning that many companies face a constant battle of adding resources with limited life spans to address short-term goals at the expense of long-term ROI.
Migrating to the cloud can help change this, however, as providers like dinCloud offer inherently scalable deployments that can adjust as quickly as a company needs to, making sure that customers only pay for what is required by spinning up additional resources when more capacity is needed and spinning them down when no longer in use.
Compliance and Regulations
Governance, risk and compliance regulations in the pharmaceutical industry in particular are incredibly challenging, mainly as the protection of sensitive information becomes more of a hot-button topic with each passing day. Any cloud service provider you partner with should have their infrastructure built around multiple layers of security including physical and virtual access, encryption, IP reputation service, dedicated firewalls, VPNs and multi-factor authentication. They should be able to protect the data by taking automated system level snapshots with the ability to restore the data when needed. These features and capabilities are very useful when designing your security and data protection policies for compliance and regulation purposes. By partnering with a provider that helps facilitate compliance, pharmaceutical companies can remove some of the burden from internal staff, so they can focus more on strategic initiatives to propel your company forward.
Research and Development Concerns
Historically, one of the most significant issues that companies in the pharmaceutical industry face are security-related issues during research and development. Protecting intellectual property at every stage of the game is of paramount importance, but legacy solutions that companies have been working with for years have often been inefficient and have led to massive productivity bottlenecks. Moving to the cloud helps relieve many of these challenges. Thanks to its hugely efficient infrastructure that allows for increased collaboration and security.
Massive Data Requirements
One of the biggest challenges that pharmaceutical companies face on a daily basis is the truly staggering amount of data they have to contend with. As a result, any cloud-based provider your company chooses to partner with should be able to facilitate access to your entire workstation. DaaS solutions like HVD allow users to log in from any device for increased access to the files and applications they need to remain productive. With the heightened access to data offered within a virtualized platform, pharmaceutical companies can increase insights and ultimately gain competitive advantage with accelerated R&D.
Flexibility
Being able to work from any location is necessary in any business, but it is particularly important for pharmaceutical companies. Migrating to the cloud gives your organization and its employees the ability to work from anywhere, so long as an active Internet connection is available. Take dinApp, for example. The dinApp application virtualization product from dinCloud is compatible with multiple operating systems including Windows, Mac OS X, iOS, Android and more. It allows applications (including legacy software) to run independently of hardware. Thanks to a virtualized environment run out of dinCloud’s secure data centers. Pharmaceutical employees can access the same apps and documents in the field that they can from behind their own desks, breaking down the barriers of geography when it comes to productivity and turning any environment into an “office” should the need arise. This also breaks down geographical barriers; pharmaceutical companies can leverage the very best talent for their R&D initiatives, regardless of where they may be located.
Additional Considerations for Pharmaceutical Cloud Migrations
See our pharmaceutical overview page for additional considerations and resources for pharmaceutical companies considering migration to the cloud.
