Amryt Pharma specialises in developing and commercialising treatments for serious and life-threatening rare diseases.
Started in 2015 by CEO Dr Joe Wiley, the company approached Nostra in 2019, prior to its first major US acquisition, for help in upgrading its ICT infrastructure. The Dublin-based firm is now a global award-winning business, with operations in the US, Europe, Latin America, Africa and the Middle East. In early 2023, it was acquired by Chiesi Farmaceutici, an established Italian pharmaceutical company, for $1.4bn, almost double the company’s closing stock price.
“We set up Amryt in 2015, and by 2019 were acquiring Aegerion, a much larger US company. We were a Dublin-based business with a turnover of around $20 million and no dedicated IT function, soon to become a global operation with a turnover of $150 million. It was obvious we needed a better ICT solution.
So we had to make a choice — go with an outside solution or try and build our own. I’d seen other companies try and roll out in-house IT from scratch, usually a phenomenally expensive and massive distraction, and I’d made the decision very early on that I didn’t want that for Amryt.
We asked a few Managed Service Providers to pitch and the decision to pick Nostra was fairly simple. They understood what we did, and were able to explain what they could do for us in ways we could understand. We did diligence before we contracted with them, made the decision to go with them for a trail period initially and then it became a permanent fixture.
There were worries about the cloud. In our highly regulated industry, security and confidentiality is vital and there were some fears in this area. But we trusted Nostra from the start and they were responsive to any of our concerns.
The transition was seamless. Everyone Nostra put on our case was dedicated to us so we knew they weren’t distracted trying to do other things for other people, but also the account manager, and all the others, were just really easy people to work with.
And it’s all been positive. Aegerion was losing $100m a year and we’d bought it on the basis we could make it profitable. We achieved that in two quarters by fairly tough cost reductions – and migrating their IT to the cloud was a major part of that.
The work Nostra has done has improved many areas of our business. I’ve always tried to recruit the very best talent, but you can’t always get the top people to come and work in Dublin, so we rely heavily on remote working, and Nostra has helped us make that much easier and far more secure. And being cloud-based is also playing a vital role in our project work, which is multi-functional and cross-territorial and would be virtually impossible without having something like Sharepoint.
To grow a business you have to find people you trust and delegate to them, but there’s zero point in doing that if you’re not going to empower them to go and do what they do. That’s my philosophy, and that’s what we’ve done with Nostra.”
“You trust people you know and we got to know them. We rely heavily on their expertise but they’re good human beings, and that human component is really important. We trust them to do what they do, and that frees us up to get on with what we do.”
Amryt first approached Nostra in 2019 to do a full IT audit of Aegerion, a US pharma company it was acquiring, and to assess the best way of integrating Aegerion‘s systems into the Amryt network.
Nostra’s initial recommendation was that a radical approach to updating Amryt’s ICT infrastructure was needed. It identified three key challenges:
The work in the US revealed that the acquisition would increase Amryt’s size by more than 10 times, and its legacy two-server infrastructure would not cope with such a massive expansion. Aegerion had over 80 legacy servers in four data centres across the US.
Aegerion’s large array of outdated and poorly integrated servers was creating inefficiencies and security concerns, was racking up huge running costs and had become an unsustainable drain on the US operation.
Amryt was concerned that its ICT security procedures were not keeping pace with its expansion. Its multi-regional footprint and wide remote-user base left it open to breaches and viruses and, like all companies, it was facing increasing threats from external cyber attacks. It only had a single firewall in its legacy infrastructure and its vulnerabilities were clear.
Cloud Migration
Moving Amryt’s ICT infrastructure to a secure cloud-first platform was clearly the most effective first step and promised other significant benefits, not least for multi-regional operations. Choosing Azure also allowed Amryt to utilise Azure information protection and SharePoint for file collaboration, built out for Amryt on a dedicated intranet.
Virtual Servers
Migrating Aegerion‘s 80-plus servers ended the need for the precarious and expensive reliance on physical server management and maintenance. By decommissioning all four data centres and reducing the requirement to just 30 virtual servers, Amryt was able to radically improve efficiency and significantly reduce costs.
Centrally Managed Security
Nostra deployed Intune, a mobile device management solution providing total control over remote company devices such as laptops and phones, crucial with Amryt’s remote user base. It can now take on new staff anyhwhere in the world, and onboard them in a couple of days with a secure device prepared specifically for them. And it introduced a SIEM/SOC function to Amryt’s cloud network: a Security Information and Event Manager platform monitored by a Security Operations Centre. The SIEM provides an always-on monitoring system blocking and analysing threats. The SOC element involves Nostra specialists using that analysis to develop additional mitigations to keep ahead of evolving threats.
Migrating Amryt to a secure cloud-first infrastructure streamlined much of its day-to-day operations and allows it to benefit from the latest developments in security and user interaction.
Enhanced management applications also makes mergers and acquisitions far simpler. In 2021 Amryt acquired and quickly integrated a second US company, and in January 2023, was itself acquired by the Italian company Chiesi. Amryt’s revitalised ICT infrastructure should make the initial relationship between the companies far simpler.
To ensure a smooth transition with such a complex project, Nostra provided dedicated teams of Azure networking professionals, including a senior engineer and a dedicated account manager, to worked closely with Amryt at every stage. This has built a high level of trust between Amryt and Nostra, and provided the foundation for positive ongoing relationship.
Nostra now manages and runs the entire Microsoft stack for Amryt, from helpdesk functions and end-user requirements to ongoing security and asset protection, and continues its SOC work. By breaking away from the traditional in-house IT function, Amryt can now call on the expert skills of over 200 ICT professionals, and can concentrate on its core business.
“The work Nostra has done has improved many areas of our business. I’ve always tried to recruit the very best talent, but you can’t always get the top people to come and work in Dublin, so we rely heavily on remote working, and Nostra has helped us make that much easier and far more secure. And being cloud-based is also playing a vital role in our project work, which is multi-functional and cross-territorial and would be virtually impossible without having something like Sharepoint.”
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