Blogs

On 9 November 2017, West officially opened our recently expanded Kiefernweg Campus in Eschweiler, Germany, which includes a new global center of excellence for the research and development of pharmaceutical packaging components and systems for injectable medicines.

West has completed a preliminary study of its SmartDose® technology platform, which incorporates a Daikyo Crystal Zenith® (CZ) cartridge. The study evaluated multiple attributes of the technology and subjects’ experience with the self-application process.

With the explosive growth in social media, mobile devices, cloud computing and access to data both internal and external to West (now referred to as Big Data), West IT has been working to ensure that we are able to leverage these transformational trends. In 2012, we updated our IT strategy to allow us to be part of the revolution while making it feel more like an evolution. The initial phase began with investments in cloud technologies – both private and public – to drive down IT operating costs and to enable us to take advantage of software enhancements made by our strategic partners.

Beyond the challenges of ensuring that data privacy laws are observed across the globe, West IT is faced with the need to safeguard intellectual property, trade secrets, and confidential company and employee data while ensuring that we can serve our global customers. This is becoming increasingly more complex with the rapid advances in mobility and cloud computing. At West, IT is evaluating the best way to enable our employees to take advantage of these rapid advances in technology while still ensuring protection for confidential company information.

Over the past several decades, IT has moved from a data-center model, where most information and data was inside the enterprise, to the Internet, where there’s more information outside the four walls of the enterprise than within it.  More recently, the pervasiveness of mobility, social media, and bring your own device (BYOD) and cloud (BYOC) are bringing about both technical and cultural changes that are profoundly changing enterprise IT and computing.