Introduction
Cell Signaling Technology (CST) is a privately-owned life science research company headquartered in Danvers, Massachusetts. The company was founded by a group of scientists in 1999 and now employs hundreds of team
members worldwide. CST is dedicated to providing the world’s highest quality diagnostic products and innovative research to accelerate biological understanding and enable personalized medicine.
When the COVID-19 pandemic started, CST employees were moving to remote work and demands on their business were unpredictable, leaving company leadership “very concerned about business continuity,” according
to Dana Seehale, Senior Director, IT Enterprise Systems & Lab Informatics at CST. In navigating the shifting terrain of business operations, CST needed to ensure their service providers were well-equipped to handle conditions imposed by the pandemic, while maintaining the stability, security, and performance of CST’s systems.
CST was particularly concerned with the performance of Oracle eBusiness Suite (eBS), the enterprise resource planning (ERP) software CST relies on to manage the systems and applications powering their global supply chain. “These are mission-critical systems we use every single day to ship our products around the world, execute financial transactions, manage our books and, in some cases, manufacture our products,” said Dana.
At the time, the cloud environment for Oracle eBS was being hosted and managed off-site by a third party data center, limiting CST’s access, flexibility, and control over their resources. CST thought that, by bringing hosting and management of their ERP in-house, they could better control for business continuity and, at the same time, actually “upgrade and streamline how our environments are managed,” Dana recalled.
“The project was very well-organized. People understood exactly what to do, everybody was engaged, and they got the work done right. I could not have asked for better execution.”
Senior Director, IT Enterprise Systems & Lab Informatics
Solution
CST had already been working successfully for years with Versetal Information Systems (Versetal), a SOC2 organization and winner of the CSO50 for North America in 2020. Versetal was supporting one of CST’s internal database infrastructure teams with supplementary database administration, design and development services, and expertise.
Versetal swiftly and securely migrated CST’s ERP to a private AWS cloud, and continues to provide CST with monitoring, maintenance and support.
Aware that Versetal is also an expert in cloud transformations for ERP and internally-developed database systems, Dana realized that “Versetal was in a unique position to understand the full scope of our infrastructure and well-positioned to facilitate the transition for Oracle.” Thanks to their long-standing working relationship, CST already “knew how to work with Versetal and what their capabilities were, which could be used for our new
undertaking,” according to Dana. As the pandemic began to intensify, Dana connected with Versetal to define the scope of work and get started on the cloud migration for CST’s Oracle eBS environment.
Versetal’s cloud team and Oracle ERP administrators configured a nextgeneration, dedicated private cloud on Amazon Web Services (AWS) tailored to CST’s workloads and long-term goals. Through methodologies refined over 20 years, Versetal swiftly and securely migrated CST’s ERP to their new private AWS cloud. Connected systems were upgraded and integrated, including tax software, reporting tools, Dell Boomi middleware, and databases supporting CST’s proprietary scientific software. Rigorous security standards were followed and 24/7 monitoring was implemented to minimize outages and network vulnerabilities.
“The project was very well-organized,” said Dana. “People understood exactly what to do, everybody was engaged, and they got the work done right. I could not have asked for better execution.”
Following the successful cloud migration, Versetal continues to support database infrastructure and CST’s new private cloud. They participate in daily scrum meetings with CST’s core IT team, collecting feedback from multiple channels and helping to plan ongoing development. Versetal works closely with Dana as well to constantly improve process and execution—regularly evaluating risk factors, Oracle eBS projects, and the integration of new technologies to facilitate innovation at CST.
The Results
Next-Generation ERP Cloud Environment
Smooth, Swift Migration
Versetal leveraged two decades of cloud migration expertise to ensure that “people understood exactly what to do, everybody was engaged, and they got the work done right,” according to Dana. “I could not have asked for better execution.” Versetal was able to reduce downtime by 16 hours and accelerate deployment by several days.
24/7 Monitoring + Maintenance
Framework for Success
For Dana, “having a company like Versetal, who’s taken care of all of the infrastructure and tools to help my team be successful, I can’t even tell you how important that is to me. It means the difference between us adding value to the business and just maintaining facilities.”
Personalized Support
“The personal nature of the engagement with Versetal” is an important advantage for Dana. “It’s the fact that I can call and have very open and honest conversations, which frankly, in my experience, is kind of unusual. The fact that we have these strong personal connections, is really a differentiator for me.”
