This week, SAP is hosting its annual user conference, SAPPHIRE NOW, and we are thrilled to announce a new partnership between AWS and SAP aimed at bolstering support for our shared Life Sciences clients as they transition to cloud solutions. For over 45 years, SAP has been at the forefront of delivering exceptional solutions tailored to the Life Sciences sector. Many of our customers and APN Partners have already begun migrating their workloads to HANA on AWS. Given the highly regulated nature of the Life Sciences industry, our collaboration with SAP is designed to facilitate smoother transitions by providing new, effective tools.
Key Considerations for Life Sciences Clients
As highlighted by Sarah Jenkins, AWS Partner Network Compliance Program Leader, in a previous post discussing GxP (Good anything Practices) on AWS, we are committed to enabling customers to run GxP workloads effectively on our platform. In January 2023, we released a whitepaper titled, “Considerations for Using AWS Products in GxP Systems,” developed with Lachman Consultant Services, Inc., a premier consulting firm specializing in FDA and global regulatory compliance in the pharmaceutical and medical device sectors.
A common concern among IT departments is ensuring that they can satisfy compliance requirements while maintaining the same level of control in a cloud environment as they do in an on-premises setting. AWS allows customers to manage their infrastructure as code, offering the same rigorous control over infrastructure changes as they do with software. Additionally, AWS automates traceability and audit processes, enabling not only compliance but also promoting continuous adherence as agility increases and operational burdens decrease.
One notable Life Sciences client, BioTech Innovations, is establishing a fully integrated digital operation within a GxP framework. According to Laura Grayson, Chief Digital Officer at BioTech, “We chose to partner with SAP and AWS because we wanted the flexibility that AWS offers while ensuring complete compliance with all regulations in the biopharma sector. In the GxP domain, having AWS’s industry knowledge to guide us and collaborate with our quality team was invaluable.”
Our aim is to accelerate the digital transformation of Life Sciences clients adopting SAP’s cloud-based innovations. These clients can utilize the resources and tools provided by both SAP and AWS to meet their compliance goals more swiftly while supporting critical applications like SAP S/4HANA and SAP BW/4HANA.
Simplifying HANA Deployments on AWS
We are also excited to announce that we will soon provide guidance and documentation for the validated deployment of SAP HANA in a GxP environment. This effort builds on our collaboration with SAP in creating the “SAP HANA on the AWS Cloud” Quick Start, which can scale HANA to 34TB. This solution sets up the necessary AWS compute, networking, storage, and services for deploying specific workloads on AWS, adhering to best practices for security and availability in a validated Life Sciences environment. This can be achieved in as little as an hour through a series of AWS CloudFormation templates and Amazon Machine Images (AMIs) that configure SAP HANA. The included templates support all necessary auditing and logging features, alongside an IQ (Infrastructure Qualification) document to ensure a qualified environment post-deployment.
Accelerating Transition to HANA
Furthermore, we’re introducing a rapid test migration program for existing SAP Life Sciences clients to quickly transition to HANA, referred to as FAST. This program allows clients to move workloads to HANA in a matter of days, rather than enduring lengthy migration processes. Early adopters have successfully established test environments in under a week.
Ensuring Compliance Through Qualification
Validation involves establishing documentary evidence that a process or activity maintains compliance throughout testing and production phases. To achieve and maintain a validated environment, clients need to monitor their qualified systems and utilize many of the controls and services AWS offers. Key documentation related to Installation Qualification (IQ), Operational Qualification (OQ), and Performance Qualification (PQ) is crucial. To streamline this process, we are collaborating with SAP to share templates that address these qualification requirements. You’ll be able to use the IQ Template provided by AWS in conjunction with the OQ and PQ templates available directly from SAP and their network of Systems Integrator Partners.
“This collaboration between Life Sciences and AWS is crucial as companies swiftly move to the cloud, seeking to reduce costs, complexity, and risks associated with their increasingly digital operations,” states Mark Thompson, Global Vice President of Life Sciences at SAP. “AWS’s industry expertise in managing regulated GxP datasets makes it an ideal partner for SAP. Initiatives like FAST are just the beginning of many more solutions that will arise from our partnership, and we eagerly anticipate future innovations.”
We are dedicated to helping our clients get their essential SAP solutions to HANA on AWS more efficiently, with improved pathways to meet their specific compliance needs. To learn more about running SAP on AWS, please join us for an upcoming session at SAPPHIRE NOW 2023 on Wednesday, May 17th, at 3:00 PM at Booth 539.
For more details on this session, check out this post on another blog, which has more insights.
Cloud Compliance for Life Sciences in the Digital Age: Interactive Session
Life Sciences organizations managing regulated workloads in the cloud can achieve continuous compliance with auditor and regulatory mandates. Discover real-world scenarios of how heavily regulated environments maintain governance and control while implementing SAP on AWS. Gain insights into AWS services that facilitate continuous compliance during the transition to a digital landscape. Learn how the SAP and AWS collaboration can expedite your transition and deliver mission-critical applications while enhancing value for your organization.
Join our expert panel, including Emma White – Associate Director of Business Systems at BioTech Innovations, Mark Thompson – SAP’s Global Vice President of Life Sciences, and Sarah Jenkins – AWS’s Industry Compliance Lead, as they provide insights and address questions on this significant topic.
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