Bristol Myers Squibb Deploys Accounts from Multiverse Solution within an hour Using AWS Control Tower

Blog Guest authored by HonChong Chang, Director of Cloud & Devops at Bristol Myers Squibb

With operations spread across five continents, global biopharmaceutical company Bristol Myers Squibb’s (BMS) cloud team had too much on their plate serving its multi-account, multi-region project teams, without enough resources or hours in the day. Manual workflows for incoming requests took months to finish as the team grappled to balance security, costs, networking, governance, and DevOps requirements. For an organization striving to discover, develop, and deliver innovative medicines that help patients prevail over serious diseases, this slowed down the pace of innovation and experimentation.

Using Amazon Web Services (AWS), BMS’s cloud team built a self-service, Multiverse platform that automates the manual tasks its cloud team has to perform when setting up new AWS environments for project teams. BMS’s solution saves the organization time, while democratizing project teams to create and deploy AWS accounts quickly and securely—creating efficiencies across the organization.

Automation to fuel innovation and experimentation

Using BMS’s Multiverse platform, project teams can access the cloud services they need to create their own project environment and get started in minutes, instead of waiting for weeks for the cloud team to set it up for them. “We called it the Multiverse because teams now could spin out their own universes for their projects. It takes away the undifferentiated heavy-lifting from our cloud team through automation and standardization,” says Hon Chong Chang, director of development and operations and cloud engineering at BMS.

Users can access the portal to fill in attributes and provide details for the type of environment they are seeking, using a simplified interface. The platform then automates the setup for the environment, like creating the IAM, network, DMZ, firewalls, guardrails, and other essentials, behind the scenes, getting accounts ready and running within an hour. “It would have taken the cloud team months to serve all these incoming requests manually without this platform,” says Chang.

The platform also offers pre-built and authorized Service Catalog Kits for project teams to quickly perform standardized tasks, like creating a serverless website. Built using AWS Service Catalog, a solution that allows organizations to centrally create, organize, manage, and govern a curated catalog of AWS services, these kits make the entire repertoire of AWS services available to all users, giving them the tools and best-practices for plug-and-play use. Since these kits are secured by default, projects using these kits need less extensive security review, and get frequently upgraded with the latest postures. And, while these kits are pre-built, users have the flexibility to adjust parameters (like the number of IPs, AZ, regions) as needed. “It takes six weeks to complete these projects manually, but it takes 20 minutes if you use the kit. For our cloud team, these kits make the process smooth by standardizing the work and handling setup behind the scenes,” says Chang.

Generating efficiencies across the organization

The platform’s cohesive and intuitive user experience ensures project teams are no longer kept waiting for support from the cloud team. Leveraging AWS Control Tower, they can build a fully functional, ready-to-go, AWS landing zone, in under an hour and with zero lines of code, while centrally managing the network and data, and automating governance.

AWS Control Tower also gives teams the ability to establish guardrails that can be applied across the environment or in segments, build constraints, automate compliant account provisioning, and centralize user identity and access. This further improves the user experience, as the users feel more confident about not being able to inadvertently breaching any compliance standard.

AWS Service Catalog helps teams establish baselines, like updating details, such as zero days. “All the business processes are built-in and interwoven so that it’s straightforward for the user,” says Chang. “The user feels like they’re a part of the process, instead of getting notified that access is denied with no additional information,” he adds.

Users of the Multiverse solution realize cost savings, as well as time savings, because the cloud team doesn’t need to spend as much time doing security review for new accounts and environments. Plus, the platform also has features like cost engineering and budget alarms built into the solution, to help teams meet budget goals. Users can view the estimated cost of using a specific AWS service and can choose the correct service to fit their requirements. The platform sends notifications when a project passes benchmarks in the budget (like 50 percent or 90 percent) so teams are aware of spending and can pull back if needed.

The company plans to continue investing on the platform based on the success it has seen so far. From allowing for automatic re-orientation of infrastructure based on data residency requirements (which is critical when dealing with sensitive patient data), to flexibility in adding newer functionalities as soon as they are available, the solution is built for the future. And, self-service training labs, called Quick Labs, which send personalized emails with information about how to use the environment once it’s set up, makes users feel more confident using it and reaping its benefits.

Accelerating research into novel therapeutics to deliver better patient outcomes through

“We have hundreds of accounts that are using the platform every day to help transform patients’ lives through science,” says Chang. With innovations like the Multiverse platform and many others, BMS is working every day to combine the agility of a startup with the reach and resources of an established multinational pharmaceutical company, powered by talented individuals who drive scientific innovation.

To learn more about BMS’s multiverse platform and see a demo, watch this session from Re:Inforce 2022.

For more detailed information about how AWS supports innovation in Health and Life Sciences, visit AWS for Health.

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HonChong Chang is one of the leaders from Bristol Myers Squibb’s Cloud Core Services. His experience in cloud, software development, deployment and latest digital innovation helps channel his passion in using cloud automation and DevOps philosophy to vastly speed up, simplify, add intelligence yet decentralize IT and business processes so everyone’s empowered and unencumbered. He is lucky to be part of the BMS Cloud Team which brings together some of the best and brightest in the industry to make a significant difference for medical research on serious diseases.