The Business Case For Life Sciences Moving To The Cloud

By James Jardine

For the last few years, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has been in the process of moving many of its applications and services to the cloud. According to CIO Tom Simpson, leveraging cloud services is helping the agency process huge amounts of data, quickly. “We ingest large amounts of data: regulatory data, industry data, data from genomic sequencing and medical devices. What used to take weeks to process, we can now do in literally hours.”

Moving away from on-premise computing allows the FDA to increase processing power as needed, saves on infrastructure costs, and helps the agency stay current with the latest upgrades. And, Simpson is not alone in realizing the benefits of cloud technologies.

What does it mean to move to the cloud for your organization? What benefits can be realized and what questions should you ask as you evaluate the right cloud partner. By citing research and use cases, this paper will explore the benefits of cloud services, along with some of the challenges associated with migration, as you weigh what makes sense for your organization.