Pharmerit Supports Global Pandemic Effort
Based in Bethesda, MD, Pharmerit validates clinical studies to determine the efficacy of drugs and vaccines for 90% of the top pharmaceutical companies. As part of the global effort to stop the pandemic in its tracks, Pharmerit’s teams worked to validate the COVID-19 vaccine.
In addition to working on this validation, Pharmerit purchased Peloton, based in the Netherlands, and then merged with Open Health, based in the U.K. Seemingly overnight, this merger changed Pharmerit into an international company. With 700 end users, the company has 15 offices in 5 countries, including the U.S., U.K., the Netherlands, Germany, India and China. Pharmerit needed managed IT services and a cloud environment to increase efficiency, improve collaboration and reduce the costs of working globally to prove the efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccine.
Aging Infrastructure Reducing Productivity and Increasing Costs
With the merger of 3 companies came an overlap of IT support services and disparate technology environments. Three different IT managed service providers were now in charge of help desk support, as well as on-premise and remote-work devices. Often, end users didn’t know whom to contact when a problem arose, and they had to wait to get their questions answered. COVID-19 made it necessary for workers to work remotely, but only 30% of the company could do so with the aging infrastructure. With outdated versioning protocols and noncompliant devices, what was very time-consuming work now was becoming almost impossible. Pharmerit needed a way to roll out new remote devices to their managed teams and to have a secure cloud-based network that all could access.
Managing IT Solutions for a Global Company
Pharmerit’s IT director asked Nortec to create a cloud-based solution that would bring the organization under one umbrella. Greg Smith and Kevin Wills, Nortec’s senior cloud consultants, used the cloud adoption framework to create a strategy that would consolidate all of Pharmerit’s soon-to-be 700 employees under a single Azure cloud environment.
The Nortec team rehosted their line-of-business SQL server-based system and substantial amounts of data onto a single Azure cloud platform, with only 6 hours of downtime over a holiday weekend – a considerable feat considering the age of the systems being migrated.
Additionally, reviewing Pharmerit’s business operational needs, Nortec deployed an additional domain controller to enhance the company’s ability to continue their critical work, uninterrupted by potential network instabilities, and procured an additional SQL server for the European offices.
Rapid employee onboarding
Increasing its workforce from 175 to 700 created many access points for the Pharmerit network putting Pharmerit’s network at risk for cyberattacks. By imaging devices with Autopilot, Nortec helped Pharmerit to scale up the remote work quickly and safely. With a few keystrokes and credentials, the Pharmerit IT team had its workforce safely working from home.
Affordable, all-inclusive IT support
Built on the Microsoft 365 platform, Nortec’s Managed Modern Workplace provides an affordable option for Pharmerit’s IT that includes help desk support, security and strategic IT consulting with in-house IT teams. With Microsoft 365, Teams and Azure, Pharmerit’s remote managed teams were able to collaborate seamlessly in real time with live editing software.
Disaster-proof global network
With everyone working remotely on validating the COVID-19 vaccine, Pharmerit needed a secure network that was backed up and protected. They could not afford to lose one moment to an outage or data breach. Nortec maintained Pharmerit’s business continuity so that they could complete their important mission.
Managed IT Services for a Global Workforce
With Nortec’s careful assessment and planning of a new cloud environment, Pharmerit was able to harness the power of the Microsoft Azure cloud quickly, with minimal disruption to their critical work. Now Pharmerit is better able to execute their vital mission more efficiently during the height of the global pandemic, ensuring more people access to effective vaccines sooner.
