25 Top Information Managers: 2010
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Dave Powers, associate information consultant, Eli Lilly & Co.
It is difficult to overstate the R&D mindset cloud computing has brought to Eli Lilly under Dave Powers. In 2008, Powers was experimenting with Amazon Web Services and touting the possibilities of burstable computing and storage internally and with partners as a way to turn fixed infrastructure costs into variable costs.
The greatest effect was felt among science teams, who discovered that the ability to dial up large-scale computing without budget and time hurdles could change the very way they thought about research. If 2008 was a year of testing algorithms and data against hypotheses in the cloud, 2009 was the year that yielded 10 tangible use cases.
Alongside the elastic cloud approach, Lilly is leveraging RightScale's infrastructure management interface and services against appliance/application stacks in a "vending machine" concept that allows self-service to infrastructure and up to three tiers of applications as needed.
"It's disruptive - and I don't use that term loosely - from a technology standpoint, from a business process standpoint and from a procurement standpoint. We're not making big capital investments; it's pay as you go, which is very different," says Powers.
2010 marks the first strategic use of the "innovation engine." Powers sees the cloud as powering. "It's now a very viable option for us to have something that's now deployed in minutes instead of weeks."
