Through a powerful combination of hybrid work technologies, Citrix helps Kusum Healthcare keep its confidential data secure while improving uptime and simplifying IT infrastructure manageability.
“For a fast growing pharma company like ours, security and productivity need to go hand in hand. With a comprehensive solution spanning across internal and external access, Citrix has delivered the powerful business impact that we were looking for – confidence in our data security complemented with improved productivity and efficiencies built on seamless connectivity and a centralized architecture.”
Dalveer Singh, Associate VP & Head – IT, Kusum Healthcare Pvt. Ltd.
Kusum Healthcare Pvt. Ltd. is a young and fast growing pharmaceutical company. Founded in 1997, the Delhi headquartered company deals in pharma product manufacturing and has a presence in over 28 countries. The company markets its wide range of pharma products globally, including India, Ukraine, CIS and African countries.
Existing Security and Connectivity Challenges Pose Roadblock
With its focus on Research & Development, Kusum healthcare has over the years built a wealth of Intellectual Property (IP) with many formulations under registration and at various stages of development. This has poised the company for a big leap and gain an edge over competition.
With data at the heart of a company's success, its security was a key concern for the management. Dalveer Singh, Associate VP & Head – IT, Kusum Healthcare and his team recognized two areas that posed data security risks.
The first was the risk posed by the employees accessing the corporate network remotely considering the company had employees traveling regularly between the different office and plant locations and required access to data for work. According to Singh, this increased multifold the chances of potential cyberattacks and threat of corporate and research data getting exposed.
Another area that posed risk to data security was the company’s de-centralized architecture. This made it inherently more prone to risks owing to lesser control over the data and its access on endpoint devices. According to Singh, the company realized the need to move to a more secure centralized architecture that would make it simpler to control both data and its access.
“With confidential R&D data at stake, which is the mainstay of our business, it is imperative that we plug any possible cybersecurity risks that come with accessing the corporate data, whether remotely or from within the corporate network. As a pharma company, this was a key requirement from both a business and compliance perspective,” explains Singh.
While looking into the security concerns, the company decided it was time also to address the availability issues with its existing MPLS network.
The existing architecture required to manually switch between the primary and secondary links in case one goes down. This resulted in a latency of 15-20 minutes, disrupting user access to critical applications and data for that duration. Lack of real-time data availability, in turn, adversely impacted productivity and user experience.
Poor connectivity at the remote manufacturing sites was further hampering user experience, particularly during the video conferencing sessions. With many instances of video conferencing calls getting disconnected in the middle of the meetings, the IT team was receiving multiple complaints. The connectivity issue also created challenges around conducting backups in a seamless manner.
According to Singh, “We were looking for a solution to help us streamline both our security and connectivity challenges to help us optimize our operations and keep up with the fast growth that we are experiencing.”
Citrix Offers One Stop Shop Answer, Saving Management Trouble
With the twin objectives of streamlining both security and connectivity, Singh and his team identified Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops as key technology to meet these objectives.
After evaluating various solutions, the team found Citrix to be the right fit with its distinctive edge from a features standpoint. The fact that Citrix had many reference customers from the pharma industry provided a certain comfort factor around the solutions’ success in similar industry environments.
What led Kusum Healthcare to take the final decision in favor of Citrix was the fact that it offered a holistic solution, easing management headaches.
“We realized the value proposition of bringing in a single vendor who offered a comprehensive solution for all our requirements under one umbrella. Dealing with one entity not only made the implementation easier but also took away the management complexities with a single console for complete management,” explains Singh.
Improved Security, Manageability and Productivity Brew a Potent Success Story
According to Singh, “For a fast growing pharma company like ours, security and productivity need to go hand in hand. With a comprehensive solution, spanning across Citrix has delivered the powerful business impact that we were looking for – confidence in our data security complemented with improved productivity and efficiencies built on seamless connectivity and a centralized architecture.”
Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops fundamental to success
The Citrix solution has helped Kusum Healthcare move to an inherently secure architecture by centralizing all its resources in one data centre. This centralization has strengthened the security by making it simpler to control data and access as the data no longer resides on the endpoint devices.
According to Susanta Goswami, DGM-IT & Head Infrastructure, Kusum Healthcare Pvt. Ltd, “While we have never experienced a data breach so far, now with Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops there is an added comfort knowing that the employees are working directly on our servers and cannot extract any information or install/configure apps themselves which can pose a potential security risk.”
Moving to a centralized architecture with Citrix has also simplified manageability and eased enforcement of compliance requirements, policy and software updates, patch releases, etc. This has reduced the burden on the IT team for mundane support tasks, which they can now utilize more productively.
The cost savings that have come with moving to thin clients have been an added benefit for Kusum Healthcare. On an average, the company has been able to save 50-60% by shifting to thin client laptop/desktop infrastructure.
