Merck & Cie

Due to confidential data, the company decided not to utilize cloud-based storage and sought an alternative to Microsoft DFSR that supported NetApp.

Amid the majestic scenery of Switzerland, a convergence of legendary Swiss craftsmanship, high technology, state of the art chemistry, and modern medicine takes place each day at Merck & Cie in the historic cities of Altdorf and Schaffhausen.

As a subsidiary of one of the world’s oldest pharmaceutical and chemical companies, Merck KGaA in Germany, Merck & Cie is part of a global organization focused on creating new ways to prevent and treat illness in people. In Switzerland, Merck & Cie does its part by developing and manufacturing pharmaceutical ingredients and substances that facilitate drug transport and delivery, and is recognized as the world’s leading supplier of reduced folates.

One of the major challenges in the pharmaceutical industry is ensuring that the integrity of chemical compounds remain consistent when each batch is produced for both quality and regulatory reasons. Consequently, accurate records of the production process must be maintained in order to comply with government regulations including USFDA 21 CFR Part 11 and EU Annex 11.

As part of their regulatory compliance plan, Merck & Cie decided to implement IT infrastructure that would support collaboration and sharing of laboratory data, research analysis and compliance related reporting created and maintained in both Altdorf and Schaffhausen. “This project was part of a larger infrastructure consolidation project that reduced the cost of servers and featured the implementation of centralized data storage in Schaffhausen on NetApp filers, while Altdorf would use Windows-based storage,” stated Frank Grieshaber, Project Manager, Information Services, Merck & Cie.

After analyzing project requirements for the collaboration environment, the information services team determined that due to the sensitive information being shared a cloud based solution would not be appropriate and that a distributed file replication solution would likely meet their needs.

According to Grieshaber, “We immediately looked into Microsoft DFSR, but quickly determined that it was not possible to implement on NetApp, so we continued to research other solutions.”

After additional Google searches, and inquiries to an IT consulting partner, they learned about PeerLink, an enterprise-class file sharing and collaboration solution from Peer Software.