Headquartered in Waltham, Massachusetts, Bioverativ is a biotechnology company dedicated to transforming the lives of people with hemophilia, cold agglutinin disease, and other rare blood disorders. Bioverativ’s therapies were the first major advancements in the treatment of hemophilia A and B in nearly two decades. Today, they are the leading extended half-life therapies. Bioverativ has locations in the United States and Tokyo, and is owned by Sanofi, one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world.
Cate Fagan, CIO, leads the company’s 50-person IT team. “At Bioverativ, IT is not viewed as a back office function. Our team is involved in all strategic business decisions, ranging from mergers and acquisitions to new product allocations,” Fagan said. “Our motto is: ‘science matters because patients matter.’ Data is critical to everything that we do. One of our main IT objectives is the confidential protection of our patients’ data. Rubrik and Microsoft Azure have allowed us to achieve this goal and adhere to the long-term retention requirements dictated by the biopharmaceutical industry.”
FORGOING TRADITIONAL SOLUTIONS FOR RUBRIK’S MODERN DATA MANAGEMENT
Fagan and team had experienced headaches with legacy tape-based data management solutions at previous companies and knew they wanted to go in a different direction when starting Bioverativ. The IT team was also under severe time constraints during the company’s launch.
“We had 90 days from getting the lease on our building to having our infrastructure up and running,” said Fagan. “Our environment needed to be protected, and Rubrik’s team helped us un- derstand how their cutting-edge technology would fit with our IT strategy in a quick time frame.”
“At Bioverativ, we care deeply about partnering with our vendors. Rubrik stands out because they are completely customer-first. It’s rare for us to work with a vendor that values relationships as much as we do,” said Fagan. “We also have to thank our partner, SnowCap Technologies, for bringing us Rubrik in the first place. We love their consultative approach, which is based on understanding our business requirements and providing solutions that truly fit our needs.”
CLOUD MOBILITY WITH RUBRIK AND MICROSOFT AZURE
“We also chose Rubrik over other solutions because it fit perfectly with our cloud-first mentality,” said Bob Dyer, Associate Director of Infrastructure and Operations. “We didn’t want to go down the path of building a tape library and dealing with off-site storage. There are extensive data retention requirements due to the nature of our industry, and Rubrik was attuned to our need for a robust, future-forward solution that reduced data management complexity.”
“We saw Rubrik as a cloud-first, patients-matter initiative,” said Fagan. “We already had a strong relationship with Microsoft and use many of their products, including SharePoint and Office 365.”
“We are now archiving to Microsoft Azure with Rubrik. The integration was a breeze,” said Dyer. “We are archiving to Microsoft Azure based on the SLA policies we set in minutes. Once the policies were set, Rubrik automated the rest, so we no longer have to think about it.”
SEAMLESS ARCHIVAL AND DATA SECURITY WITH RUBRIK AND MICROSOFT AZURE
“One of the main reasons we were looking to implement a cloud strategy is our long-term retention requirements,” said Dyer. “We need to protect R&D data for the life of the drug, which could be 30-40 years in some cases. However, that retention policy does not apply to our corporate data. There are many different types of data subject to different SLAs, which is extremely complicated to manage with a traditional backup solution. Rubrik’s automated SLA policy engine makes it simple to ensure that our data protection aligns with our business objectives and compliance requirements.”
“With Microsoft Azure’s focus on working with the healthcare industry, it means that we can deploy HIPAA and HITRUST-ready solutions to meet the regulatory compliance needs of our business,” said Dyer.
“Rubrik’s software spans across on-prem to Microsoft Azure, seamlessly archiving older data to Azure via SLA policies,” said Dyer. “ Rubrik provides a single platform to protect our virtual machines, database services, applications, and research data while ensuring all our critical application data is easily discoverable and quickly recoverable.”
“Security is paramount for protecting patient data. We feel confident our data is protected because Rubrik and Microsoft Azure provide end-to-end encryption in-flight and at-rest,” added Dyer.
A SINGLE SOFTWARE ACROSS ON-PREM, EDGE, AND CLOUD
Bioverativ is using Rubrik to protect NAS, SQL, Microsoft Active Directory and Linux for their 100% virtualized Nutanix environment. Other benefits include:
Remote management with Edge: “We utilized Rubrik Edge after acquiring another biotech company, which made for a smooth transition of their data to our onsite Rubrik clusters. I’ve participated in numerous M&As over my career, but this one was by far the easiest because of Rubrik. We were able to make the transition quickly and meet that crucial, 30-day-from-close deadline.”
Streamlined compliance for audits: “From a compliance standpoint, auditors want to ensure we have valid backups of our data and can recover on the fly. With Rubrik, it only takes us minutes to pull our backup reports and give them sufficient evidence that we’re protected.”
Plug-and-play: “We set up Rubrik and were backing up our environment in the same day. It was exactly as advertised.”
Unparalleled customer support: “Rubrik’s support team gives us the white glove treatment. Their technicians are absolutely fantastic, put our minds at ease, and are extremely responsive, which was a lifesaver when starting the company.”
Near-zero RTOs: “With Rubrik, we can recover in minutes. It takes longer for us to gather the restore requirements than it does for us to perform the actual restore. I’m truly amazed at
the speed, especially compared to solutions we’ve used at previous companies.”
Significant management time savings: “We love that the support team handles upgrades for us, which gives us more time to focus on strategic projects. At previous companies, it was a pain to always have to stay on top of various upgrade schedules for different solutions.”
Full visibility and control with Polaris GPS: “We absolutely love GPS, which gives us a simple, high-level view of all of our sites and allows us to centrally manage our infrastructure. This has led to immediate dividends by giving us insight into potential short- term capacity issues. GPS is a perfect example of where Rubrik is headed when it comes to innovation.”
Seamless integration with Nutanix: “We use Nutanix for our virtualized environment and are thrilled that Rubrik integrates perfectly with our primary storage solution.”
INDUSTRY
Biotechnology
RESULTS
Near-zero RTOs
Significant management time savings
THE CHALLENGE
Protect new infrastructure in short timeframe
Choosing a vendor for cloud mobility with
Microsoft Azure
Complicated SLA management with different
types of data
THE SOLUTION
Fast installation with plug-and- play solution
Cloud mobility with Microsoft Azure
Automated SLA policy engine for management simplicity
PARTNER
SnowCap Technologies