May 5, 2015

AstraZeneca made a bold move last year and took back control of its servers and networks that pertained to core drug development from outsourcing vendors, which led to a 90% reduction in the number of critical outages, and decreased incident response down to a few hours instead of several days. For other segments of its business, AstraZeneca is using several software-as-service (SaaS) applications. For example, the company recently moved its entire internal communications to the cloud, using Box’s cloud content sharing and collaboration platform. The platform allows secure collaboration companywide of its 51,000 employees across more than 100 countries and with external parties, as well as mobile access to all information. AZ is the largest account in the pharma industry using this particular file-sharing tool.

AstraZeneca CIO David Smoley expects this agile business model to allow the company to do what it does best: create treatments faster and more cost effectively.
“At AstraZeneca this collaboration is critical as we work to accelerate the process from development to commercialization, to get new medicines to patients faster,” Mr. Smoley says. “IT has to be an enabler for the business, giving our people the right tools and capabilities so they can focus on what they are here to do — bring lifesaving medicines to patients.”

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The full article, which includes a quote from Cumberland’s managing partner Jeff Lee, is available on PharmaVOICE’s website. http://www.pharmavoice.com/article/ceo-challenge/

Filed under: In The News