Community Spirit

2015 has been a busy year for IDBS, with the launch of E-WorkBook 10, our flagship research tool, and several customer and partner events across the world. These include Connect Philadelphia and our Community Forum series.

For us, connecting with our customers and partners is a big part of our strategy to continuously develop our R&D solutions, to ensure that we are delivering on the things researchers want and need in their tools. We also love to open up opportunities for dialogue amongst users so they can share stories and proof points around implementing our software and engaging with us. It’s why we work so hard to arrange our Community Forums each year.

Sharing is caring

In 2015 we hosted forums in Boston, Chicago, San Francisco and Munich. We brought customers including Bayer and J.R. Simplot to the fore to give attendees insight into what we are doing and share best practice. Delegates were able to absorb insight from existing customers and it was great to see users across all sectors, including R&D, Life sciences and food manufacturing, finding common ground when it comes to gathering and storing data.

As you may expect, efficient data management and IP protection are high on the list of priorities for most R&D organizations. How can organizations ensure IP is secure without hindering collaboration? What cultural changes need to occur to break down silos in research labs? Finding innovative ways to do this is often the crux of our conversations, whether that’s around the benefits of one single data ecosystem in the lab (as opposed to multiple tools for collecting and storing data) or the way data software is delivered, on premise or via the cloud.

In the clouds

Despite initial security and integration concerns, increasingly firms are becoming more open to cloud delivery to enable collaboration with partners and colleagues across labs and research organizations around the world. Often we see different sectors at different stages in the cloud journey.

Non-pharma industries are embracing this technology and seem far more inclined to move to the web. In pharma, larger players remain cautious, while the smaller organizations are making moves. For these biotechs and smaller companies, the cloud is an exciting opportunity to overcome enterprise infrastructure resource challenges and stand apart from competitors. It’s similar in the oil and gas sectors.

For the foreseeable future, we can expect these organizations to mature at different rates when it comes to the cloud. Enterprise web technology offers some significant advantages in terms of cost and ease of deployment, but over with 25 years of supporting businesses on premise, we see the importance of both.

We’re planning more free Community Forum events across the globe in the New Year. Register your interest and we’ll let you know when we’re in your area.

Wishing you happy holidays from IDBS!