How Servecentric Enterprise Cloud has benefitted RealWorld EDC – A Case Study

RealWorld EDC is a cloud-based software application developed to collect patient information for post-marketing surveillance studies conducted by Pharmaceutical & Bio-pharma industry. RealWorld EDC offers a full end-to-end solution from eCRF (electronic Case Report Form) design and build to delivery of clean sets of data.

The company works with its client base through the provision of the software solution directly to the pharma (and related) sectors and through a partnership with Contract Research Organisations across the globe.

RealWorld EDC now provides the platform for over 75 studies with a client base including some of the top 10 global and international pharmaceutical companies & CROs.

THE CHALLENGE

Core to RealWorld EDC’s service provision is providing a simple to use and always available front end while adhering to complex directives for the conduct of patient studies in line with patient data privacy regulations. Client companies undertake strict auditing processes regularly of company infrastructure and processes including penetration testing.

Additionally, the company requires the flexibility to quickly and efficiently start new studies, run test scenarios and ensure quality control of new versioning across both Windows and Linux OS platforms.

With internally hosted infrastructure, provisioning of new servers to facilitate growth or rollout of new studies was tedious and took valuable time away from our development teams. Realworld needed a solution that would reduce this effort while providing consistently high performance and security.

“While we focus our efforts on application development in line with strict regulations, we need a platform and partnership model that gives us agility around deployment on a robust and secure infrastructure. Ideally, we needed a solution that would allow us to control all data in our core infrastructure while supporting fast-changing requirements in the test/dev, quality and front-end application areas.” Conal Nolan, Head of Data Management.

THE SOLUTION

RealWorld has built a hybrid cloud platform for delivery of RealWorld EDC to their global client base. The core data resides on private cloud hosted primarily at Servecentric’s Data Centre in Dublin, Ireland while applications are delivered utilising Servecentric’s public cloud platform, Servecentric Enterprise Cloud (powered by CloudSigma).

The self-service public cloud platform delivers the scalability and agility for the company’s requirement while delivering the necessary performance to run applications delivered to a global base of end-users. Additionally, with low latency, high bandwidth cross-connection directly into RealWorld’s core data in the Data Centre, Servecentric delivers guaranteed network performance that is usually associated with costly connectivity solutions on other public clouds.

Finally, Servecentric supports the environment through the provision of a set of managed services provided by onsite 24 x 7 x 365 support team.

“Servecentric’s solution works for us because the Public Cloud element facilitates tuning consumption of high-performance RAM, CPU and storage without getting into tied bundles or having unforeseen transaction charges. We do not want to be concerned with platform availability, performance and security, and to this end, Servecentric has proven to be excellent partners.” Tomás O’Mahony, Study Director.

THE IMPACT

Once RealWorld EDC started using Servecentric Enterprise Cloud, the company immediately began to experience the expected benefits of complete agility and efficiency around application deployment. In addition, the solution has resulted in tangible cost savings and a complete elimination of time spent on infrastructure support.

The company has also benefited significantly from the introduction of accompanying managed support services from Servecentric. The company is free to continue its strong growth trajectory without concerns relating to the management of IT resources.

“Servecentric’s difference goes well beyond the platform. They are an organisation that wants to make it easy for us to do business. Even though the cloud platform includes 24 x 7 chat support as standard, Servecentric is always there when we need them and provide access to key personnel when we need a little extra help.” Conal Nolan, Head of Data Management.