Healthcare Industry’s Preferred Partner for Marketing Solutions Delivers Always On Services with the Help of everRun
THE COMPANY
Since 1986, J.Knipper and Company, Inc. has been known throughout the pharmaceutical industry for developing and delivering smart, effective and efficient commercial solutions. The company offers a broad array of health marketing services that range from direct marketing and sampling through to data analytics and Web-based applications. Beyond its roots in direct marketing and sample distribution, Knipper’s MyPharmaSuite™ also offers innovative solutions to sales and marketing challenges, including MyPharmaRep.com™ (an online solution for non-personal brand promotion and vacant-territory coverage), MySampleCloset.com™ (an online paperless sample ordering system) and MyRepCenter.com™ (a web based ordering system for the sales force).
Located in Lakewood, New Jersey, Knipper has invested heavily in its physical and data infrastructure in order to provide its pharmaceutical clients with the same level of FDA facility, procedures, verifications and quality that they devote to the production of their products. The company currently has 270,000 square feet of space, with 12,000 of that for refrigerated and 7,500 for controlled substances, along with an advanced data center. With its new infrastructure and Software as a Service product suite, it was critical for Knipper to find a high availability solution that would deliver the 24x7 reliability required for the safe handling of application hosting, database management, and enterprise services.
THE SITUATION
Working with some of the largest pharmaceutical and biotech companies in the industry, Knipper’s web applications, MyRepCenter.com™, MyPharmaRep.com™, and MySampleCloset.com™, must deliver 24x7 customer service facilitating orders, information and reporting for sales representatives and physicians including samples for over-the-counter, Rx and controlled substances
“We have several client-facing web applications designed to enable physicians to order products and to provide sales representatives with a means to order samples and access product literature. It’s extremely important that these web applications are available 24x7. Many of the reps and physicians that our products serve are ordering in the middle of the night, early in the morning, at all times of the day,” said Knipper’s web systems engineer Marc Gerardi.
Knipper successfully manages two specific high-level downtime risks that required a more cost effective, less time consuming technical solution.
- FDA non-compliance and loss of refrigerated samples if the management system experiences downtime
- Customer service headaches and loss of revenue if doctors or sales reps can’t place orders because the web applications are unavailable
The new solution required the highest degrees of automation, dependability and ease of use.
Previously Knipper was using automatic system health checks with third party tools and file sync technology to control these downtime risks. “It was a time consuming manual process of systems recovery requiring dedicated monitoring personnel and rapid group response to mitigate issues when they occurred,” said Tony Quintenz, Knipper’s Director of Network Services.
“The overhead associated with mitigating downtime, including the administrative and operating costs, as well as the learning curve and time required to train employees in the process was a significant burden on the entire IT team,” added Mr. Quintenz.
THE SOLUTION
After evaluating various high availability solutions, Knipper IT managers agreed that Marathon’s everRun® solution was simpler to implement and would provide a higher level of efficiency than the other solutions considered.
Knipper chose Marathon’s everRun software, running on standard Dell servers, to guarantee that its critical applications, including the warehouse management system and web applications, would be available and operational at all times with a lower overhead and higher ROI. everRun is used to protect many of Knipper’s enterprise production environments from downtime, including several Dell PowerEdge R900 servers with Microsoft SQL Server. Knipper purchased, installed and configured the everRun software quickly and easily.
“We chose Marathon because they offered the best package overall. everRun offered real-time synchronization which is key for our 24x7 operations, it’s cost-effective and required minimal training for our employees. Another winning factor was the simple implementation; we were set up within a matter of hours, not days,” said Mr. Quintenz.
THE RESULTS
Since Knipper finished the everRun implementation, its enterprise environments, including its warehouse management system and client facing web applications have maintained the highest level of availability in spite of planned and unplanned events.
“It’s a great product, we are now able to maintain our high level of redundancy, reliability and flexibility for our web-based products and enterprise services in the most cost effective and efficient manner,” added Gerardi.
After realizing the disaster recovery and data protection benefits of supporting its critical applications with everRun, Knipper plans to expand its use for additional web applications and other solutions. “As we expand more of our services on the web and offer additional options for customers, we will look to everRun for the continued protection we need.”
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