CASE STUDY
IQVIA
IQVIA enables modern data science advancements by capturing global healthcare data sets with the help of Spectra Digital Archive
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Spectra StorCycle
Overview
IQVIA helps customers accelerate results, improve patient outcomes and unleash new opportunities by making possible intelligent connections between data, advanced analytics, and global healthcare expertise. Technology and unparalleled data management are key to IQVIA’s mission of driving healthcare forward.
Unparalleled data management is crucial to our mission of driving healthcare forward. Our goal was to deploy a data management and storage strategy that would enable us to connect data across multiple sites. Spectra’s Digital Archive solution provides the insight into our data that we need to make better storage management decisions, helping us scale our storage capacity on a lower-cost tier, freeing space on our primary storage by moving unused data to an archive infrastructure.
— Lucus Johnson, IQVIA, Inc. Technology Department
The Challenge
To manage their expanding data storage requirements and replace an aging archiving environment, IQVIA went looking for a new data management and storage solution that could help them better connect data between multiple locations and make data available as needed. Ideally, IQVIA preferred a new solution that would integrate with their existing storage environment, allowing them to make the most out of their existing infrastructure investment and slowly transition the storage workflow to a new system with minimal disruptions.
The Solution
IQVIA implemented a Spectra Digital Archive (SDA), a hardware and software solution for cost-effective digital preservation. As part of their SDA implementation, IQVIA deployed the following components: three instances of Spectra’s StorCycle enterprise software for digital preservation, two Spectra BlackPearl hybrid storage platforms and two Spectra Stack Tape Libraries with LTO-8 tape drives and media. The Spectra Digital Archive solution provides a combination of open system applications and hardware that intelligently monitors and migrates data across multiple storage devices while maintaining fast access for users. Spectra StorCycle allows IQVIA to scan and identify data for archiving in their primary storage based on pre-defined criteria such as age and size, providing insight into the scanned data to enable data managers to automate the movement of data to the right tier at the right time. Once identified for archiving, StorCycle moves data to IQVIA’s BlackPearl units. The object storage-based BlackPearl platform then writes data to their Spectra Stack tape libraries in an open-standard format.
BlackPearl further enables bi-directional data synchronization, meaning data is automatically replicated between their two primary data centers in New Jersey and Dublin, Ireland, which is essential to IQVIA’s ability to avoid unexpected disruptions to data workflows. The bi-directional data movement allows for internal resiliency between the two sites and eliminates the need for additional copies of data to be transferred offsite. Replicating data between these locations improves data availability and resilience, ensuring IQVIA’s organizational assets are preserved in the event of a natural disaster or data center corruption by means of redundant components.
IQVIA’s new SDA solution offers the expandability they need to scale their data storage archive as operations demand, further increasing available storage on their primary system by freeing up space through moving unused data to the archive infrastructure.
Environment Snapshot
- Spectra StorCycle Enterprise Software for Digital Preservation, three instances
- Two Spectra BlackPearl Hybrid Storage Platforms
- Two Spectra Stack Tape Libraries
- LTO-8 tape drives and media
