In today’s world, companies need to act quickly and remain flexible. Cloud-based platforms offer the optimal basis for this. In industrial manufacturing, the use of the cloud has been established for some time. The life sciences industry is just taking off in this area.

The term »cloud« has been a constant companion in the IT industry for almost ten years now. But everyone has different ideas about it. Some of the definitions differ greatly from each other, so that every discussion about “cloud” starts with a joint definition of terms.

The first points of contact for fme existed long before my time here, that was in 2008 with »storage usage in the cloud«. Since then, the team has grown considerably and the portfolio has been sharpened. Our capacity utilization in the cloud environment is proof of client acceptance: Cloud computing has arrived at fme clients.

For our customers in the life sciences, cloud means above all accelerating their business models. From research, development and studies to marketing – there are applications in all areas that enable companies to act faster thanks to cloud computing.

A Practical Cloud Life Sciences Example

One of my Life Sciences clients recently told me about his concerns about an upcoming go-live. The submission department will also be affected. The availability of the systems is of utmost importance when submitting studies. Due to the go-live, there was now the danger that the systems would not be available for several days.

Take, for example, a company that submits around 2,000 entries a year and has an annual turnover of 40 billion euros. This means eight submissions per working day, which can ultimately result in products not coming onto the market until days later.

Now imagine the system is not available for three days:

• 24 submissions will be submitted later to the market
• The company suffers a decline in turnover due to later submissions
  (Our example company has an annual turnover of 40 billion euros, which corresponds to 1.1 million euros per day!)
• In addition, there is frustration among employees and projects that are internally delayed and may cause further delays.

A go-live in a cloud-based system would look completely different. Because: A cloud solution provides, in addition to various advantages, significantly higher availability of systems (up to zero downtime). Less downtime means an increase in turnover for life sciences companies.

A look into the cloud is therefore worthwhile, but requires a good overview

You want highly available, cloud-based systems – of course with the necessary security levels?

First of all, you need to find your way around the amount of available offers and select the best combination of providers and services, taking into account your business conditions such as costs, technology specifications or operational requirements.

We would be happy to help you get an overview! Just get back to me. I look forward to hear from you.