Daiichi Sankyo established “advanced global drug discovery company specializing in cancers” as its 2025 vision. This aligns to its corporate philosophy to contribute to health and enrich lives globally through a continuous, innovative discovery of pharmaceuticals to meet various medical needs. “We decided on a cloud-first approach for our IT infrastructure as a critical pillar for supporting the 2025 vision, and actively promoted its introduction,” says Mr. Chisato Shirai, Senior Manager of Daiichi Sankyo DX Promotion Headquarters, IT Solution Division.

Since Daiichi Sankyo built its SAP ERP core business system (GERP) for International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) in 2013, the company decided it was time to update its IT infrastructure. It had to consider the long-term system life cycle and its digital transformation needs, says Mr. Takashi Kunihiro, Group Manager of Group 1, ERP System Division 1, Headquarters 2, Hitachi Pharma Information Solutions, Ltd., which supports core business system development and operation for Daiichi Sankyo.

“We studied how the next generation IT infrastructure should look like, to secure the business continuity, maintain security, reduce cost, ensure scalability and availability, improve performance and streamline disaster recovery (DR) measures,” he added.

Daiichi Sankyo considered three approaches: on-premise, hybrid cloud, and all-in cloud for its new IT infrastructure. It decided to go all-in on the cloud, and selected Amazon Web Services (AWS) after comparing multiple cloud services.

“Although we were initially uneasy about the reliability of cloud, we were able to confirm that it could meet various security and availability requirements. While evaluating our options, we discovered that there would be a significant merit in terms of cost savings as well. We selected AWS for its proven track record in handling many domestic Computerized System Validation (CSV) supports in accordance with GxP requirements, and it follows CSV guideline essential to pharmaceutical business. Its track record on SAP ERP operation inside and outside Japan was also a factor,” says Mr. Shirai.

Other than that, the fact that AWS offers a purpose-built SAP platform, including sizing standards (SAPS value) as SAP-certified cloud and extensive support for SAP HANA certified instances, were all considerations for selection.

In addition, the company has already been promoting the migration of the in-house business systems, as well as GERP, to AWS. Approximately 300 servers were already operating on AWS. Because of that, Daiichi Sankyo decided it was best to standardize its systems on AWS.

The GERP migration to AWS kicked off in late 2018, and was implemented in three phases: August 2019, January 2020 and February 2020, taking into account impact on business continuity. AWS Server Migration Service and AWS Application Migration Service (CloudEndure Migration) were used to switch the production environment with a three-day downtime during the migration.

Mr. Yuji Ishii, acting Section Manager of the IT Solution Division, DX Promotion Headquarters, Daiichi Sankyo states, “While it used to take a considerable amount of time to build a server, and to change the specification for traditional projects, we were able to significantly minimize that with the AWS migration. In addition, we were able to keep the cost low by paying for IT only when we consume it, unlike with traditional infrastructure.”

Daiichi Sankyo migrated 19 systems, including SAP ERP (finantial accounting and controling, sales and distribution, material management, production planning and control, human capital management) and peripheral systems like manufacturing execution system, warehouse management system, quality management, and expense management, to AWS. It upgraded its OS and DBMS to the latest versions, and re-sized application after reviewing requirements such as GxP/ CSV compliance.

The AWS Tokyo region was mainly used for business continuity, whereas DR and the backup environment ran in the Singapore region.

“The factor for scaling back was that we were able to replace mainly our backup server with AWS. We were able to identify unnecessary software as well. As a result, we reduced server operation cost by approximately 50 percent compared to before the migration,” says Mr. Kunihiro.

The systems performance has also improved, with processing time reduced by about half in the load test conducted after the migration. For instance, outbound delivery processing, which used to exceed two hours during peak business hours, can now be completed within 10 minutes. This was due to more than double improvement of the disk I/O performance. The improvement in performance contributed to streamlining the overall business.

“In terms of system operation, disruptions and low productivity due to hardware failures were eliminated, and the load of responding to problems and maintenance adjustment were reduced. This has enabled the IT Solution Division personnel to focus on preparation for digital transformation.” says Mr. Ishii.

A cloud-first approach helps Daiichi Sankyo align its GERP with the pharmaceutical industry data exchange system (JD-NET), interbank Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), and communication devices in the cloud. It aims to migrate remaining on premise systems and devices to the cloud to further streamline and reduce cost. In addition, it wants to further optimize its SAP ERP to support global standardization of business processes and data to accelerate decision making. “It plans to improve efficiency, modernize business process, and accelerate business innovation with SAP on AWS, and possibly with S/4HANA.”

Daiichi Sankyo intends to use its migration knowhow to start shifting large scale business systems that require faster response times, convert research and development and drug discovery systems that handle large data amounts to the cloud, and leverage cloud native services to analyze real world data.

“We have established the “DX Promotion Headquarters” aiming to drive sustainable growth in April 2020, and founded the “DX Planning Division,” “Data Intelligence Division” and “IT Solution Division” under its subsidiaries. The IT Solution Division which takes on company-wide system planning will proceed with a cloud-first approach in accordance with the management strategy in collaboration with the DX Planning Division and Data Intelligence Decision,” says Mr. Shirai.

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