VMware and BW Businessworld organize an exclusive CIO forum for the pharmaceutical industry. The event deliberates on the challenges faced by pharma IT decision makers and the way forward.

The pharmaceutical industry is today confronting challenges that it has never encountered before. Factors such as tremendous pressure on the top line, extremely long time-to-market, and stiff competition have combined to pose a tough challenge for business. This in turn has put pressure on the CIO to deliver faster and better IT services at a lower cost. VMware and BW Businessworld jointly organized an exclusive CIO forum for the pharmaceutical industry. It addressed the challenges and issues faced by the pharma IT decision makers and deliberated on the solutions and the way forward. The highlight of the evening session was a CIO panel discussion 'Transitioning to the Brave New IT -- Embracing New Age Technologies'. The panelists included industry leaders like Jitendra Mishra, Chief Information Officer, Wanbury; Viral Gandhi, CIO, Pirmal Enterprises;  Krishna Parab, Head – IT, Siro Clinpharm; Gopal Rangaraj, Sr. Vice President –IT, Reliance Life Sciences;  and Murad Wagh, Regional Manager System Engineering, VMware. All the CIOs agreed that the onset of new technologies had changed their role. With the advent of SMAC (Social, Mobility, Analytics and Cloud), they could leverage technology to come up with innovative solutions to drive business. During the deliberations, several top-of-the-mind issues facing enterprise technology decision makers from the vertical were also addressed. Murad Wagh, Regional Manager System Engineering explained how VMware was enabling pharma CIOs in driving growth. “We use the tools we believe unlock the potential of cloud computing: shifting IT processes, the software-defined data center, the hybrid cloud and end-user computing. This four-pronged approach enables us to fully leverage the capabilities of the Software-Defined Enterprise with a comprehensive, cost-effective and streamlined offering for CIOs” he said. According to Shivin Sharma, Regional Manager-West, VMware,  enterprise technology leaders were under pressure to push business to the next level. “With whirlwind transformations happening in the pharma, CRO, and life sciences sectors, the pressure is back on IT to deliver competitive edge and agility to business. Hence, CIOs are adopting new architectures of IT, such as software-defined data centers, in order to drive business growth,” he said. Anil Gupta, Sr. Consultant- System Engineering, VMware; Prateek Sharma, Sr. Consultant- System Engineering, VMware; and Rakesh Sangeshwaram, Sales Specialist – System Engineering, VMware shared a technical presentation on Business Mobility & Protecting Intellectual Property with Workspace transformation.