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Case study

IQVIA Chooses Nirmata for Kubernetes Security and Governance

IQVIA’s Digital Media Solutions business unit moved applications to an agile development process on Amazon EKS with Nirmata, making deployments 75% faster and cutting alerts by 50% without compromising security.

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IQVIA by the numbers

Faster deployment process
75%
Fewer alerts
50%
To push, deploy and test, down from 4–6 hours
1 hour
For the team to become proficient in Kubernetes
<6 months

Challenge

Main challenges

IQVIA, a Fortune 500 company and the largest healthcare data science company, focuses on digital enablement for leading international pharmaceutical brands and agencies. Its Digital Media Solutions business unit, led by head of technology Krishna Boppana, runs a first-party advertising platform that conforms to privacy restrictions like CCPA.

The unit had a goal to move applications to an agile development process using Amazon EKS, and to do so in just a matter of weeks. Kubernetes has a steep learning curve, and with no tools in place to aid with deployment, IQVIA needed more reliable controls and seamless deployment measures, especially to familiarize DevOps teams based in different countries and time zones.

“They (developers) are stuck if they need to do a deployment because there are one or two people in different time zones in other parts of the globe, and they’re waiting, so we’re wasting time. We immediately realized that we needed to enable these development teams.” – Krishna Boppana

  • A solution that was easy to manage regardless of scale, without a staff of Kubernetes subject matter experts.
  • Reliable controls for seamless deployments, especially for DevOps teams new to Kubernetes.
  • Security policies to ensure that clusters and workloads are protected. Kubernetes is insecure by default, which presents inherent challenges for a company that consistently handles sensitive healthcare data.

“Working with Nirmata allows us to avoid DevOps bottlenecks without compromising security. It keeps our day clean, improves productivity, and we can sleep better at night.”

— Krishna Boppana, Head of Technology, Digital Media Solutions, IQVIA

Solution

The solution

After extensive research, IQVIA enlisted Nirmata’s secure developer self-service platform, enabling self-service Kubernetes cluster provisioning on private and public clouds. Compared to other tools with similar features, Nirmata facilitated a friendlier deployment process, allowing for the creation of deployment policies and changes on the fly.

With Nirmata, IQVIA configures their clusters so Nirmata sees them, and uses configuration management to restrict users within certain environments, improving how they perform cluster management.

IQVIA also applies Kubernetes and industry best practices from the beginning of the CI/CD pipeline to enforce compliance. Any exceptions can be clearly documented and audited. These policies help avoid misconfigurations, a leading cause of vulnerabilities, and enforce standards such as vulnerability scans before any code can be deployed, even to the earliest stages of the pipeline. These guardrails shift security left and design it in from the beginning.

“The users can come in and do the deployments themselves, and we can create a clean way of separating the groups; deployment groups, test groups, admins, enabling deployment. With this new world of teams being dispersed around the world, you must have that self-service, and DevOps cannot be the bottleneck.” – Krishna Boppana

Results

The results

  • Easier learning, faster deployment. IQVIA reduced the time it takes for developers to become proficient in Kubernetes, improving significantly in less than six months. It engaged its 25-person team, reducing the learning curve and simplifying the deployment process, making it 75% faster.
  • Access control without slowing teams down. As a first-party privacy data company, data security is a steadfast priority. Nirmata’s flexible controls and configurations let IQVIA optimize speed and ease of use with security at the same time, which helps collaboration with international and outsourced teams.
  • Alerts reduced by 50%. In the earliest stages of configuration, the development team consistently received urgent messages. After tuning Nirmata configurations, the team significantly reduced the number of alerts without compromising security, and now seldom gets more than one or two alerts per day.
  • Improved access to secure healthcare data. By leveraging Kubernetes with Nirmata, IQVIA provides pharma clients worldwide with reliable and secure access to top-quality first-party data.

“We used to do major deployments over the weekends – it typically took four to six hours just to make sure everything works. Now, we push, deploy, and test within an hour.” – Krishna Boppana

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