Empower Cloud

Empower Cloud combines the world's market leading CDS, Empower, with Amazon Web Services (AWS), the world’s most secure cloud services platform.  This combination offers computing power, database storage, content delivery, and other functionality to help you scale and adjust to business requirements. Empower Cloud for Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) leverages the internet to procure technology, drive operational efficiency, and provides a low-cost solution for scaling IT capacity by replacing up-front capital costs with low variable costs to replace on premise installations.

 
Learn more about Empower Cloud: What it is and how it works
Read AWS/Waters Case Study

Empower Cloud gives you an opportunity to capture and grow new revenue, drive operational efficiency, differentiate from your competitors and more easily expand your businesses to meet future opportunities.

Simplified Deployment & Upgrades Leverage Waters-tested Empower AWS Templates and Amazon Machine Images (AMI) developed/released under the Waters Quality Management System Reduce variability and risk with repeatable deployments and upgrades utilizing AWS management tools across global geographies Simplify deployments by utilizing the AWS Marketplace in your AWS environments

Reduce Infrastructure Complexity Better user experience and consistency for the scientific and business owners across geographies, making science accessible to everyone Eliminate hardware and third-party operating system variability and capital expense Retain ownership of IP, quality, and content Increase efficiency while improving GxP compliance and reducing the risk of regulatory friction

Achieve Scale and Speed without Capital Investment Provide the highest level of flexibility and management control over IT resources Eliminate data centers and capital costs associated with operation; physical sites, computer hardware and storage, environmental conditionals, electricity, etc. Secure the infrastructure with AWS by providing an “always on” solution with ongoing audit and assurance programs with industry certifications

Empower Cloud is deployed from the AWS Marketplace onto your own Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) within your organization's AWS account. To simplify the installation of Empower server components, Waters has commercialized an AWS Marketplace submission that provisions an Empower Database Server and a Empower File Data Server onto two separate Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instances. AWS Workspaces are provisioned manually. Each workspace has an Empower client providing dedicated computing resources giving a desktop-like user connection. LAC/e acquisition stations remain on-premises and physically attached to the instrumentation. Connectivity to on-premise infrastructure is achieved by provisioning a secured, high-speed circuit (AWS Direct Connect) from your location into your organization's VPC.  

AWS Marketplace

View Technical Overview Presentation
View Empower Cloud Deployment and Technical FAQs
Amazon Compute
Amazon Storage
Networking Products with AWS
Desktop and Application Streaming with AWS

View enlarged image

AWS cloud provides the agility needed to quickly change and optimize resources during a disaster recovery event. Empower back-end components (Database and File Share) can be backed up like traditional on-premise deployments. The output of these backups can be stored in an S3 storage repository for on-line storage and also stored in Glacier as a long term storage option. Additionally, snapshots of the storage volumes (EBS) attached to the Empower Instances (EC2) can be imaged according to a customer defined interval and also stored in an S3 storage repository. When using these business continuity plans on AWS cloud, in the event a disaster occurs in a particular region, your organization has the ability to recover its Empower deployment into another supported AWS region.

With Empower Cloud, you can improve consistency, quality, compliance, and collaboration throughout your entire organization.

Hosted services, off site data centers, or on premise data centers are simply different models of providing infrastructure. Cloud changes the landscape around infrastructure. In many ways reducing the risks associated with a traditional physical infrastructure.

• Provides simple standardization and automation of deployment with validated tools
• Eliminates manual processes and physical variation
• Increased security and offer sophisticated monitoring tools not possible with physical infrastructure

Regulatory guidelines, including the recent draft FDA Guidance on Data Integrity simply refer to cloud infrastructure as one kind of “computerized system”. From the FDASIA Health IT Report: “The agencies’ proposed strategy and recommendations are based on the premise that risk and corresponding controls should focus on health IT functionality – not on the platform(s) (e.g. mobile, cloud-based, installed) on which such functionality resides.” ¹

The key to successfully using cloud-based hosting services in a regulated environment is choosing the right cloud vendor and assessing their suitability to manage regulated data. The most recent version of Empower is designed to ensure that it functions correctly in a cloud infrastructure and reduce any unforeseen risks associated cloud deployment.

Learn more about Compliance in the Cloud
View Empower Cloud Compliance FAQ
View Amazon Web Services: GxP Compliance
Amazon Web Services: Considerations for Using AWS Products in GxP Systems
Amazon Web Services: Compliance Resources
Architecting for GxP in the Cloud

Waters’ highly trained Professional Services consultants provide the skills and expertise to make software implementation a success. Empower Cloud users have verified configurations that streamline and simplify deployment, providing faster installations. Additionally, infrastructure complexity is also eliminated, as third-party application or server virtualization technologies are not required.

	Minimize Variation and Risk Waters designs, evaluates and provides templates under Waters Quality Management Systems (QMS) Waters Professional Services assist customers to design, build and validate appropriate Amazon infrastructure Automated deployment tools replicate Waters templates onto the cloud infrastructure        Learn more about Professional Services

What is Cloud Computing
Types of Cloud Computing
What is AWS
Getting Started with AWS
AWS Cloud Compliance 

1. FDASIA Health IT Report, April 2014. Retrieved January 23, 2018 from: https://www.fda.gov/downloads/AboutFDA/CentersOffices/OfficeofMedicalProductsandTobacco/CDRH/CDRHReports/UCM391521.pdf