On November 18th, SAS is hosting a key webinar on “Meeting Regulatory Demands with SAS-Powered Analytics.” For any Australian Life Sciences organisation, pharma company, or CRO, this is an essential topic. The pressure to maintain data integrity, security, and governance for regulatory demands is non-negotiable. However, the webinar also brings a critical strategic question to the surface. As analytics platforms evolve, what is the right SAS Life Sciences cloud strategy for your organisation?
For many, the path seems to be a simple “fork in the road”:
- The SaaS Path: Use a fully managed, SAS-hosted solution like the SAS Life Science Analytics Framework (LSAF). Indeed, this is an excellent, simple, and powerful option for organisations wanting a hands-off, “submission-ready platform”.
- The Managed Platform Path: Use a modern, flexible solution like the SAS Clinical Acceleration Repository (CAR) on SAS Viya, which can be deployed on your own private cloud.
So, which path is right for you?
The “Cloud Wedge”: A Key Decision in Your SAS Life Sciences Cloud Strategy
We see it all the time in our advisory work. A large Life Sciences organisation makes a strategic, enterprise-wide commitment to a specific cloud provider (such as AWS, Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud Platform).
If your organisation has made this commitment, you face a challenge. For example, shifting your sensitive clinical data to a separate, external software system (SaaS tenant) creates data silos. This also makes connecting the data with your main cloud-native data lakes harder, and it might not meet your data sovereignty policies.
This is where Path 2 becomes a strategic imperative, not just an option. The SAS Clinical Acceleration Repository (CAR) is designed to be hosted by SAS, the customer, or “the customer’s preferred vendor partner”.
Ultimately, this allows you to get the best of both worlds. You get the full power of SAS’s compliant analytics and the security, control, and integration of your own cloud environment.
The Real Challenge: It’s Not a “Lift and Shift”
But be advised, deploying a solution like this is not a simple “lift and shift”. As our UK-based partners at Katalyze Data recently noted in a SAS community article, a “common mistake…is to treat a move to Viya as an upgrade, rather than a digital cloud transformation project”.
To get the full benefit, you must have the right governance, validation, and most critically “ongoing support and compliance for [your] systems”.
In our experience, the most common challenges are not about the software, but the execution. These challenges include the lack of a centralised data foundation, a shortage of specialised personnel, and weak data governance.
This is precisely the gap Selerity was built to fill. As a SAS Gold Partner and multi-cloud Consulting Partner, we are the specialists in this area. Specifically, we deploy, manage, and support SAS environments across various cloud platforms, including AWS, Azure and GCP.
A Global Industry Needs Global Support
Clinical trials don’t sleep. Your teams in Europe, the US, and Asia-Pacific are working 24/7. Therefore, a 9-to-5, single-time-zone support model for your critical platform isn’t just an inconvenience; it’s a business risk.
This is why Selerity has built a global delivery partnership with our UK-based counterparts, Katalyze Data.
Together, we provide a seamless, 24-hour “follow-the-sun” managed service.
In short, when you partner with Selerity, you don’t just get a stable, secure, and compliant SAS platform on your cloud. You also get an expert team providing platform administration, hosting, and support. This team is available 24 hours a day, from anywhere in the world.
We provide the “specialised personnel” and “data governance” so you can focus on insights, not infrastructure.
Your Next Step: From Insight to Action
We encourage every Life Sciences leader to attend the SAS webinar.
Afterward, when you’re ready to apply those insights to your unique SAS Life Sciences cloud strategy, we’re here to help. We can help you build the right platform and the global support model to execute it.