Leading pharmaceutical companies and life sciences organizations around the globe are moving fast to revolutionize the way they do business. With dramatically increased spending and investment in digital transformation initiatives, these firms are focused on accelerating business growth and efficiency while minimizing costs. It’s not difficult to understand why. The vast majority of these organizations realize that moving to the latest in digital platform technology will accelerate their productivity and time to market by 20 to 40%, with 90% of firms expecting increased performance based on their implementation. With this in mind, let’s take a closer look at three key elements that are essential in building leading-edge digital technology platforms to capitalize and expand market share.

No. 1: Deploying a Multi-Cloud Platform

One of the most important elements of the current digital transformation push is the migration from location-centric data centers to the cloud. In fact, cloud utilization and consumption has skyrocketed and is now expected to hit $480 billion, with no signs of slowing down. While many organizations set out to utilize a monolithic architecture or single provider, this approach has its downsides. It creates limits on scalability while limiting automation. By embarking on a fresh new approach involving multi-cloud strategy, these challenges can be overcome while mitigating risk and enabling faster innovation. In a rapidly evolving environment, it’s critical that organizations like yours build out an architecture that takes this demand into consideration. By separating the management plane from the application/data plane, your organization can maximize the capabilities that the cloud can provide and accelerate your digital transformation.

No. 2: Utilizing Infrastructure as Code

The second element in deploying a digital technology platform is the use of infrastructure as code. In a very real sense, this point is the very essence of digital transformation. By moving away from the rack/mount and all of the physical networking to a virtual environment centered on software, companies will reap the rewards and make progress in maturing their cloud model. The benefits in utilizing code include:

• Automation of everything infrastructure-related
• Creation of a model that’s built for scale
• Processes that are repeatable and error-proof
• Embedded security
• Continuous compliance

No. 3: Moving from DevOps to DevSecOps

For more than a decade, many organizations focused their attention on new technologies in DevOps. This enhanced the agility of development teams, who were capable of taking part in operational activities throughout the process. By integrating two steps that previously took a much longer time, delays were reduced and teams began delivering products much faster than before. Unfortunately, while the benefits of this approach are clear, downsides emerged, especially in the area of application security. This critical issue is of particular concern to pharma and life sciences companies upon whom the safety of patient data and even those who work for them might depend. That is why the third key element these companies must embrace to future-proof their data architecture is to bake security into their current DevOps functions. Known as DevSecOps, this approach integrates security practices throughout every step of their processes, rather than “tacking it on” at the end. Moving to DevSecOps helps:

• Ensure rapid and secure code delivery
• Reduce vulnerabilities without creating unnecessary roadblocks
• Identify security concerns early, before they become more costly
• Determine the root causes of vulnerabilities to strengthen future security
• Facilitate speed, agility and innovation

DevSecOps changes the dynamic from security that is reactive to a secure, proactive environment.

Healthcare Triangle: Accelerating Your Cloud Journey Safely and Efficiently

The good news is this: For organizations not only ready to move to, but remain at, the forefront of the digital transformation, choosing a vendor-agnostic cloud solution can help to connect their best-in-class systems while continuously adhering to HIPAA and GxP regulations. Additionally, by offering a secure cloud framework, the solutions can provide comprehensive security that surpasses even the most stringent security regulations. That’s why CloudEz from Healthcare Triangle was created—to offer the infrastructure, security and compliance, cloud managed services and optimization Pharma and Life Sciences companies need to future-proof their data architecture. With HITRUST certified CloudEz, organizations benefit from:

• Multi-cloud migration
• Automation, combining the power of latest technologies like AI, ML, IoT, Analytics, IAM, MFA and more
• Peace of mind with our state-of-the art security measures

It’s time for Pharma and Life Sciences companies to take the lead in the era of digital transformation and CloudEz and Healthcare Triangle are here to make that possible. Sudish Mogli is Chief Technology Officer for Healthcare Triangle.