During a recent webinar Samuel Clark, technical sales manager from AI-powered digital assistant for laboratories Autoscribe, and Patrick Campbell operations manager at cloud supplier Itrica, discussed how cloud users might troubleshoot issues when using a laboratory information management system (LIMS) in the cloud.
Important considerations
The webinar discussed how laboratories should know the difference between bespoke and a one-size-fits-all solutions. It said that laboratories must consider the type of performance and support required; how they want to manage security and recovery; and perhaps most importantly how much control they require over their data and systems.
Why might a laboratory move into the cloud?
The webinar began by looking at why a laboratory might migrate to the cloud. Patrick argued that the more business-critical information becomes, and the more complicated the infrastructure, the more likely a lab will want robust disaster recovery and need help to manage a geographically displaced workforce. An office or lab won't have physical and climate controls and on-site staff are unlikely to have the same level of expertise as a person working in a cloud environment. Similarly, the cloud supplier manages licensing, firewalls, VPN, and other security elements.
For a medium-sized organisation, when servers for connectivity, servers for backups, monitoring, platform and licensing are taken into consideration, Patrick estimates the cost of hosting a system on site will be three or four times as much as having a subscription to a system in the cloud. Cloud computing avoids need for investing in infrastructure. It allows users to scale up or down according to need and makes it easier to budget for and reduces maintenance costs.
As Samuel explained, most suppliers offer an off-the-shelf multi-tenant solution meaning the vendor decides when to make upgrades etc and this can be inconvenient for its customers. Intrica offers a configurable service – enabling changes to the system design, the user interface, the business logic and the functions included.
The webinar
As a learning aid, this webinar aims to help those making the hard choices of where to keep their main corporate asset – data. It recognises there are trade-offs to make, and often no perfect answers, yet aims to provide the facts to drive the right decision for the viewer's organisations. Following the webinar, laboratory engineers should be able to better decide which choice is right for them. Either way, since Autoscribe supports both on-premise and cloud deployments with their Matrix Gemini LIMS, the choice is entirely dependent upon the needs of each client.
The webinar covers the following subjects including:
- Why laboratories might use the cloud.
- What 'cloud' means.
- How secure a cloud system is.
- A look at what happens to your data.
- How laboratories can integrate instruments and other systems.
- An overview of disaster recovery options.
To listen to the full webinar click here.
