It is not a secret that behaviour and attitudes shift with time, but there has been a lot of hesitation from heavily regulated industries when it comes to adopting cloud-based systems, despite the huge benefits this offers. Historically, certain industries, particularly those in the regulated space, feared the cloud. They held the belief that cloud platforms can pose greater security risks than on-premise hosting, and that by performing tasks and storing data in the cloud latency issues would hinder efficiency and frustrate employees.
In 2001, Kallik took the bold and innovative step of developing Veraciti™ our enterprise labelling and artwork management solution, straight onto a cloud platform. With artwork management, labelling and printing being a critical part of the product life cycle, we needed to ensure we could guarantee both great performance and availability, as well as security. Since then, our customers, many of whom are in highly regulated industries, have reaped the rewards cloud hosting brings.
Unlike most other software providers who have only recently woken up to the benefits of cloud hosting, Kallik hasn’t needed to rebuild our solution to be cloud-compatible; we’ve been cloud native from day one. This year, given the ever increasing importance of security to all of our customers and our desire to continually innovate our product, we successfully and seamlessly migrated Veraciti to the most secure and leading edge cloud platform in the world; Amazon Web Services (AWS) supported by our partner, Navisite.
Stop being scared of cloud
One of the primary reasons why manufacturers from heavily regulated industries such as Medical Devices, Cosmetics, Chemicals and Food and Beverage are skeptical about moving key business systems to the cloud is fears over security and data protection. It is imperative for these industries that they store business-critical data and perform essential operations in the security environment possible. A study by Deloitte showed that security and data protection is the top driver for the organisations who are going ahead with the change.
However, a recent survey by Inc showed that 73% of businesses admit they’re not prepared for a cyberattack and according to Gartner, public cloud infrastructure workloads will suffer at least 60% fewer security incidents than those in traditional data centers. This data is challenging the notion that on-site traditional hosting is more secure; if anything, it is leaving many companies more exposed. Cybersecurity attacks are becoming more sophisticated and without technical expertise many companies will face challenges when managing security of their local infrastructure. Today, cloud hosting platforms offer better compliance, resiliency, fewer vulnerabilities and technical innovation than on-premise hosting and should be the default approach for software hosting in the future.
Cloud drives quality and compliance
One of the biggest challenges faced by heavily regulated industries is the need to constantly comply with changing regulations. AWS is a major supplier to the regulated industries and has baked in as standard all of the necessary regulatory requirements one would seek in a hosting provider. AWS is continually monitoring the market to ensure it adapts to these requirements and is fully compliant with ISO/IEC standards, GxP requirements and data privacy such as HIPPA and GDPR. The platform also frequently achieves third-party validation for thousands of global compliance requirements. Without a cloud supplier taking steps to guarantee this level of compliance, the burden of ensuring this lies with the manufacturer.
Downtime just isn’t an option
In today's fast moving world, many manufacturers run production around the clock across the globe, 24/7 availability of data and applications is critical. Even an outage which lasts a couple of seconds can have dire consequences for manufacturers, delaying shipments and disappointing customers. Local hosting back-ups are normally stored in a physical location nearby. When you consider the impact of natural events such as hurricanes, earthquakes and fires, storing back-ups in this way is almost useless. By using a cloud provider such as AWS, rebounding from these sorts of catastrophic events is much easier. In two years, Amazon Web Services experienced a total of only 7.5 hours of downtime, and most on-premise hosting will never achieve this sort of availability.
Looking ahead
With more and more regulated manufacturers adopting cloud based solutions, confidence within these industries is growing and the benefits are becoming more well understood. The value of using the cloud to host business critical systems which manage processes such as artwork and labelling are clear; unrivalled security, compliance and availability are built in as standard. Cloud really isn’t something to be feared; it should be embraced. But it is essential that you pick the best provider as your partner of choice.
Want to know more?
Whether you’re in the food and beverage, pharmaceutical, medical device, chemical, or even the cosmetic industry, our experts are ready to help you transform your labeling and artwork management with the help of our innovative software, leading the way in the labeling and artwork software space. Get in touch today to see what we can do for you at enquiries@kallik.com or call +44 (0) 1827 318100.