Cloud Quotient of Life Sciences Enterprise - Part 2
- Data Security: This has been the first concern for exchanging sensitive information over internet. Today's service providers offer data encryption with increased level of data security. Life Sciences and healthcare companies now can even consider data like patients' health records to be on cloud. If there is a critical data of new drug development which requires complete control, it is can be considered for retaining in-house.
- User Base: Smaller user base is in favor of cloud based application, whereas large user base may go against it. For large multinationals with thousands of users, applications such as matured ERPs are currently hosted in-house. Migrating such an application to cloud may not lead to a great business benefit. On the other hand a small start up biotech firm may find it cost effective to go for a cloud based ERP SaaS. Secondly if a large Life Sciences corporation wishes to invest in a phased manner in an IT application, like CRM, starting with a small user base, the on-demand model of Software is advisable.
- Scale of operation: One of the primary benefits of cloud based application hosting is linked to the cost saving by moving to cloud over traditional hosting. If the scale of operation is very high, the operational expense (service charge) may be comparable to the otherwise Capex (hardware, software purchase) over a period in future and hence may take away the impetus of moving to cloud.
- Mission Criticality: Some of the applications, like chemical reaction processing in drug discovery, may require uninterrupted system availability in order to ensure data processing. Considering the availability of internet bandwidth, geography of operation enterprise must assess application, before hosting on cloud, for its mission criticality.
- Deployment Time: Business environments are dynamic and IT is expected to enable business to make timely moves to remain competitive. Shorter deployment time requirement is a plus for on-demand SaaS. If there is a new business process or activity to set up and a new IT application is a part of it, cloud computing can help. Application for research on a new drug molecule, for example, can be considered. On the other hand it may not offer great advantage for an application involved in long term strategic move.
Finally it remains an area to be closely watched for transforming enterprise IT architecture in Life Sciences and Healthcare organizations and for giving rise to new ways of carrying out the core business functions, especially drug discovery and development. More vendors are foraying in this space and more customers are trying it. A fine balance of internal and cloud hosted applications can lead to a high organizational cloud quotient. After all, it's a matter of innovation.
