IBM and SAS made an announcement last month that expanded their strategic alliance to deliver information technology solutions for the life sciences field.
The three-year agreement will enable the two companies to bring together complementary technologies and services to help life sciences customers in North America solve challenges ranging from drug discovery and expedited processing of clinical trial information processing to product commercialization and customer relationship management.
“SAS has spent the last 27 years serving the life sciences industry, understanding its unique needs and providing powerful data management and analytic software to meet those needs,” said Kecia Serwin, general manager of SAS’ Life Sciences Organization.
New offerings will combine SAS analytic solutions with IBM’s strengths in high-performance computing and storage, business and information integration, and services. For example the two companies outline that SAS Drug Development product, when integrated with IBM’s WebSphere Internet infrastructure software, can help pharmaceutical companies manage clinical trials and drug approval processes more efficiently and potentially reduce time-to-market and time-to-profitability.
“Many customers are telling us that they need to completely transform their business and R&D processes to get new drugs through the discovery, development and approval processes faster,” said Carol Kovac, Ph.D., general manager, IBM Life Sciences. “IBM’s long-standing relationship with SAS highlights the synergy between our technologies and services. By extending our strategic alliance to life sciences, we can offer a more complete range of IT solutions that can help customers leverage information more effectively and create more collaborative research and business environments, ” said Kovac.
The announcement builds on the strategic alliance the companies announced in August 2001 for the financial services and telecommunications industries.
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