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Improving performance for Almac’s core business application with IBM Power10

Almac Case Study | IBM Power10 | Triangle

Project at a glance

“Almac’s brand is built upon our reputation of ensuring exceptional and reliable quality in all aspects of our work. We recognise that quality determines the extent of our success—which is why we felt a pressing need to bring our infrastructure in line with our desired client experience.”

Andy Hillis

CIO, Almac

Industry

Development and manufacturing services for pharmaceutical and biotech

Challenge

As a global leader in delivering expert services and support across the drug development lifecycle, Almac Group’s core business application was in need of infrastructure upgrades to enhance its performance, security, and ability to scale.

Solution

The Triangle professional services team designed a new hybrid infrastructure combining the IBM Power10 platform with the IBM AIX operating system. This modern, flexible platform elevates Almac’s application performance while improving solution security and compliance.

Technology
  • IBM Power10
  • IBM AIX
The challenge

When infrastructure holds back application performance

As a global leader in delivering expert services and support across the drug development lifecycle, Almac Group operates 18 facilities across Europe, North America, and Asia. These expert services include research and development, diagnostic services, manufacturing, formulation development, clinical trial supply services, and commercial-scale services.

A core business application is central to Almac’s global operations, affecting performance and outcomes across its workforce of more than 7,000 highly skilled employees. As the company’s operations grew, the application’s performance and ability to meet operational demands at scale became limited by the legacy infrastructure underpinning this solution.

As a service provider in a highly regulated industry, Almac needed a new hybrid infrastructure that could enable better application performance while also meeting security and compliance requirements, including those set forth by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the US and the European Medicines Agency (EU).

The solution

Building a better foundation with IBM Power10

While Almac’s top priority was upgrading to a platform that offered exceptional performance, the company collaborated with Triangle’s professional services team to conduct a benchmarking exercise that evaluated potential platform providers based on core performance as well as reliability and security.

The company wanted to deploy a modern platform that provided the following benefits:

  • Increased application performance and an enhanced user experience;
  • Best-available platform reliability to support Almac’s core value of outstanding quality;
  • Enhanced platform security;
  • Unrivalled availability and scalability capabilities for Almac’s core application.

To meet these objectives, Almac and Triangle selected the IBM Power10 platform, combined with the IBM AIX operating system. Not only did the IBM platform demonstrate a significant performance upgrade over the company’s existing infrastructure, but its high marks for security and availability meant Almac could trust IBM technology to protect highly sensitive information and support the company’s operations at scale.

“Unplanned outages were a very important consideration for our team. When we combined the high availability of IBM Power10 with the new performance capabilities it offered, the choice was simple - and Triangle’s professional services team knew exactly how to bring these technologies together in a tailored hybrid solution.”

Andy Hillis

CIO, Almac

The difference

Quality delivery, sustainable operations

In addition to meeting all of the core objectives identified in this infrastructure overhaul, Triangle’s tailored solution using IBM technology also helped Almac deliver on its sustainability objectives.

New operational efficiencies enabled by the infrastructure are driving double-digit gains in application performance, improving the end-user experience while modernising the company’s system security. These efficiencies can be maintained at scale, giving Almac a flexible foundation for continued growth in the future—while also continuing to meet the company’s sustainability goals.

Business outcomes delivered

  • Double-digit gains 
    in application performance
  • Sustainable operations
    made possible by new application efficiencies