Implemented a complete Managed Services program lowering operational costs and assuring SOX compliance.

About Talon Therapeutics, Inc.

Talon Therapeutics, Inc. is a San Francisco Bay Area-based biopharmaceutical company dedicated to seizing upon medical opportunities, efficiently and expertly leading product candidates through clinical development, and transferring value to patients, patient care providers, shareholders, corporate partners, and employees.

Challenge

Talon (formerly Hana Biosciences) was faced with rapid growth and needed to hire skilled network and Microsoft engineers to provide support throughout their facility for Network Services, Desktop/Laptop support and their Telephony systems.

The requirement was to provide technical support for thirteen servers running Linux, Windows, Asterisk, Blackberry Enterprise server, SonaSafe Backup & Recovery for Exchange, Trapeze Wireless solution, and VM Ware. In addition, Systems Administration support was required for all firewalls, gateways, external data circuits, external Voice Circuits, application servers, and their wireless LAN.

This meant that Talon needed to hire and board three full-time engineers who had all of these skills and certifications, and get them integrated into the organization with minimal impact to computer and network support for their core competency, the pharmaceutical scientists, researchers and developers working on their anti-cancer drug products.

In addition, as a rapidly growing company preparing to go public, Talon needed to come into full compliance with the technology components of the Sarbanes-Oxley law.

Solution

Netswitch was able to provide a team of engineers, skilled and certified in all of Talon’s technical disciplines, and familiar with their computing environment, to provide 24/7 technical and help desk support for all of Talon’s networks, applications, desktop, laptop and telephony for less than half the cost of hiring a new engineering team.

Netswitch’s certified SOX compliance engineers were able to make certain that Talon was in full compliance with all Sarbanes-Oxley technology requirements.

Value

Not only did Talon save significant operating costs in outsourcing their technical support requirements, they were able to turn on a switch and get exactly the engineering skills they required. Talon completely avoided the costs and organizational disruption associated with recruiting and staffing full-time employees, along with all of the training and benefits that would have been required.

Now, Talon can concentrate on their core competencies, developing drugs that prevent and cure cancer, while their computer systems are professionally supported and maintained by a staff of engineers trained to assure customer support and satisfaction. In addition, Netswitch’s monitoring tools enabled Talon to better utilize their existing IT investment and to forecast and manage future capacity needs on an ongoing basis.