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Case study

The challenge

A global life sciences company migrated to a cloud-based, adaptive data foundation to increase informational flexibility and lower costs. Over its 100 years, the company had accumulated a vast repository of global human health data that it uses to address questions and concerns, respond to legal inquiries and incorporate in ongoing research. Faced with an expensive, legacy mainframe environment that inhibited free and fast access to its own data, the company chose to migrate more than 150 terabytes of data to a new, globally accessible cloud platform.

Our approach

Cognizant examined the current state of the company’s IT architecture, developed use cases to support the blueprint for its desired future state, and then designed and managed the successful migration of all its historical data. Our cloud migration solution, based on Amazon Web Services (AWS), offered the company a global repository.

This cloud-enabled architecture is a modernized, highly responsive data ecosystem that helps the company source, transform and consume data through the cloud, leveraging artificial intelligence and advanced analytical techniques. The model provides the flexible data structure, tools and accelerators the company needs to generate maximum business value.

Cloud migration lowers costs, speeds data access

Our adaptive data foundation solution has improved the company’s data access times by 50 percent and sharply lowered its costs—$10 million over three years. It has also reduced the IT department’s reliance on an internal team and an exhaustive process to design and deliver custom reports. The validated new platform continues to help ensure compliance with global regulations for storing and using health data under the industry-standard rubric of “good practice” quality guidelines and regulations.

 

95%

reduction in external mainframe data-hosting costs

$3.6 million

saved annually by migrating to the cloud

50%

improvement in data access and retrieval speeds