The idea of cloud as an extension of internal infrastructure has become normalized as the needs of the modern enterprise become “too big or complex for the in-house data center”. With medical imaging, healthcare telephony and cloud-based EHRs now commonplace from the giants of ‘big pharma’ to local health centres, the pull of an agile, scalable provisioning model has raised questions about the suitability of legacy IT and the data center in the fight for research advancement and most recently, against COVID-19.

We ask our panelists for their take on the importance of cloud to the business of ‘big pharma’ and biotech and what impact this may have on the future of the enterprise data center.