Global life sciences leader accelerates cloud transformation

HCLTech’s disciplined, automation-led migration provides cloud compliance at scale

5 min read

Overview

A global life sciences leader embarked on an ambitious cloud transformation journey to modernize its IT landscape while meeting stringent regulatory and compliance requirements. As is true for any enterprise operating in a highly regulated environment, the client was required to retain product data for extended durations, making large-scale migration from on-prem systems to the cloud particularly complex.

With thousands of workloads distributed across enterprise environments, a rapidly evolving application landscape and a broad ecosystem of internal stakeholders and external vendors, the client required a structured, scalable and execution-focused migration approach. To drive consistent progress and maintain compliance at scale, the client partnered with HCLTech to execute a disciplined, automation-led cloud migration program.

The Challenge

Navigating regulatory complexity at enterprise scale

The client faced several critical challenges that complicated its cloud transformation:

Regulatory complexity and legacy systems: Strict compliance requirements and long-term data retention obligations made migration of aging legacy applications and large volumes of historical data especially challenging.
Scale and diversity of workload: Thousands of servers were targeted annually for migration on AWS, many with deep interdependencies and varying levels of readiness, requiring careful planning and sequencing.
Stakeholder and vendor coordination: Execution required close collaboration across multiple business and IT owners, along with the management of over 30,000 external vendors across global operations.
Technical hurdles: Certain environments were unsupported in the cloud and required redesign, while frequent last-minute changes from business owners demanded agile planning and execution.

The Objective

Delivering compliant, scalable and efficient cloud migration

The client defined clear objectives for its transformation program:

Migrate large volumes of legacy workloads to the cloud while maintaining regulatory compliance
Modernize and optimize workloads before migration where required
Achieve consistent annual migration targets at enterprise scale
Accelerate cloud adoption through disciplined migration execution
Reduce operational risk through automation and standardization

The Solution

Structured migration execution enabled by HCLTech

To support the client’s cloud transformation goals, we implemented a structured migration framework, aligned to a centrally defined strategy, combining disciplined planning, technical innovation and automation. Our approach emphasized execution rigor, compliance assurance and minimal business disruption, enabling sustained progress across large-scale migration waves.

Key elements of the solution included:

Strategic migration planning

Categorized workloads based on dependencies and analytics requirements.
Executed annual proposed migration as per “wave plans,” with iterative stakeholder engagement to ensure readiness and minimize disruption.

Technical innovation and modernization

Redesigned unsupported environments by replacing legacy technologies with cloud-compatible solutions, such as migrating clustering from MC Service Guard to Pacemaker.
Prioritized modernization at source to optimize workloads before migration.

Automation-driven execution

Implemented Pacemaker automation, reducing cluster setup time by 1.5 hours per cluster.
In collaboration with the client’s automation team, automated pre-readiness migration activities (MGN) to save approximately three hours per migration.
Enabled automation to handle approximately 35% of incidents to reduce ticket volumes and improve operational efficiency.

Hypercare and vendor management

Planned and executed structured hypercare to ensure smooth post-migration transitions.

The Impact

Driving efficiency, savings and future-readiness

The cloud migration program delivered measurable outcomes across operational efficiency, cost optimization and long-term modernization. By combining disciplined execution with automation and modernization, HCLTech’s combination of strategic, disciplined execution, automation and modernization enabled the client to achieve consistent progress while strengthening its cloud foundation.

Key outcomes included:

Operational efficiency: Consistently met annual migration targets, including migrating more than 2,900 servers in a single year, while significantly reducing incident tickets and migration windows.
Cloud adoption acceleration: Increased public cloud footprint from approximately 30% at program inception to nearly 80%, reflecting sustained progress across migration waves.
Enterprise-scale execution: Migrated more than 8,000 servers over 30 months across multiple business streams from enterprise data centers to AWS.
Improved recoverability: Reduced disaster recovery time from 12 hours to six hours, strengthening operational continuity.
Cost optimization: Delivered substantial cost efficiencies over 2.5 years through optimized migration strategies and increased use of cloud native services.

Conclusion

By leveraging HCLTech’s structured, compliance-first approach to cloud migration, the life sciences leader successfully modernized their IT landscape at enterprise scale. Our disciplined execution allowed the client to overcome regulatory complexity and coordinate a vast stakeholder ecosystem while consistently delivering large-scale migrations with speed and precision. In fact, AWS recognized this migration for excellence and a premier partnership.

The program established a strong foundation for ongoing modernization, cost optimization and future-ready cloud adoption, marking a significant milestone in the client’s long-term digital transformation journey.