THE CLIENT
Cipher Pharmaceuticals is a growing specialty company with a focus on dermatology. Their goal is to develop and acquire best-in-class skin care solutions for unmet medical needs. Cipher has everything it takes – strong financials, a robust and growing product portfolio, and savvy executive leadership with proven commercial execution capabilities.

THE CHALLENGE
Prior to engaging Bluetowne, the original company operating under the name Innocutis was acquired by Cipher, a public company, and experienced extremely fast-paced growth both in the U.S. and Canada. They were faced with the need to replace an aging computing and networking infrastructure to keep up with the growth demand. Cipher was also establishing a new U.S. headquarters, and had the requirement of zero operational downtime during the IT infrastructure replacement and migration to the new location.

THE SOLUTION
Bluetowne was indispensable in assisting with the new office planning and infrastructure build-out, working hand in hand with Cipher’s leadership team to provide support and clear direction. To facilitate growth and performance demand, the existing infrastructure was brought up to modern day “best practice” standards utilizing the latest technologies. To handle the high volume data demand of Cipher’s user base, Cisco Catalyst switches and Cisco Meraki wireless networking gear was deployed throughout the new U.S. headquarters. These technologies provided traffic segmentation, data governance and compliance oversight. Additionally, the server infrastructure was upgraded with a VMware physical-to-virtual migration of all servers.

THE RESULT
Cipher experienced no operational downtime during the transition, achieving a critical goal of the project. Cipher also achieved operational efficiency across all user functional
groups while ensuring data control and integrity. The networking architecture provided seamless control of corporate-owned, BYOD, and guest devices independently. The VMware virtualized environment ensured effective utilization of hardware resources, flexible migration of workloads with Cipher’s existing cloud environment, and expanded options for disaster recovery and data availability. Cipher is well positioned for future growth as the company continues to scale.