Norstella Builds an Enterprise Cloud Environment on AWS in under 5 Months

Norstella helps clients navigate the complexities of the drug development life cycle and bring life-saving therapies to markets quickly. The company was formed in 2022, when business intelligence company Citeline, which split from its parent company, merged with Norstella and its four other brands—Evaluate, MMIT, Panalgo, and The Dedham Group—to provide data-driven solutions for the journey from pipeline to patient.

Before becoming independent, Norstella needed to build an enterprise cloud environment and quickly migrate 23 AWS accounts from Citeline’s previous parent. Many of the AWS services that were running in these accounts intertwined with services the parent company planned to continue using, which added complexity to the migration.

With support from GlobalLogic, an AWS Partner, Norstella used AWS Control Tower to complete its migration in under 5 months without interrupting business operations. Norstella streamlined the process, which typically takes over 1 year, by participating in the AWS Migration Acceleration Program (AWS MAP), a program for accelerating the cloud migration and modernization journey with an outcome-driven methodology. “We had almost no issues during implementation because the planning was done correctly,” says Emil Adjudeanu, director of DevOps at Norstella.

Norstella now uses an infrastructure-as-code approach to provision accounts instead of involving multiple teams. “Our central DevOps team now handles product, infrastructure, and organizational changes, so the whole process is simplified,” says Adjudeanu. When Norstella acquires new businesses, it deploys automation using AWS Control Tower to align infrastructure.

Norstella continues to work alongside AWS and GlobalLogic to optimize infrastructure and reduce costs. The company is also automating more processes for productivity gains. Using AWS tools, Norstella’s developers can quickly provision new environments and pipelines, reducing the time it takes from weeks to 1–2 days. “We’ve freed up resources enormously by off-loading work, architecting it well, and putting checks in place,” says Earl Power, cloud architect at Norstella.

Norstella plans to continue enhancing its solution using new technology and AWS services such as Amazon Bedrock, a fully managed service for building and scaling generative artificial intelligence applications with foundation models. “With all Norstella unified on AWS, our teams can take advantage of new AWS technology such as Amazon Bedrock quickly,” says Michael Dosik, vice president of cloud operations at Norstella.