Compaq Awarded Major Contract to Provide Document Conversion Solution to Pfizer Inc.
October 5, 1998 08:54 AM
HOUSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 5, 1998--
Leading Pharmaceutical Company Turns to Compaq Workstation Cluster and Consulting Services to Accelerate New Drug Application Process
Compaq Computer Corporation CPQ today announced a contract worth approximately $3 million to provide hardware and consulting services to Pfizer Inc. PFE , one of the world's leading pharmaceutical companies. Pfizer chose Compaq to implement an automated system for converting voluminous drug application documents to appropriate electronic formats for submission to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Pfizer was looking to replace its existing document conversion system, which is used to scan hardcopy pages of New Drug Applications (NDAs) into electronic formats such as TIFF, index the pages through optical character recognition, convert them to Adobe's Portable Document Format (PDF) and then stitch the individual pages into a complete document. The existing system was too slow, and instability caused system crashes which further hindered the conversion process.
Compaq's automated document conversion solution - which features Compaq's Professional Workstation Cluster, system management tools and Compaq's Enterprise Consulting Services (ECS) - enables the company to separate the huge documents into individual pages, distribute the conversion of those pages over multiple CPUs and then reassemble the pages into a single, cohesive document. Through the power of multiprocessing, the new system vastly speeds up the process of document conversion, shaving months off the time it takes to receive FDA approval. As a result, it is expected to save Pfizer millions of dollars.
"The scanning and conversion of these bulky documents is a lengthy process that can take several months. The longer it takes us to convert the document, the longer we must wait for submission to the FDA for approval on the new drug, which means less time that we have patent protection on that product. For popular drugs - and Pfizer has many - lost revenue on unprotected products can be millions per day," said Walter Hauck, Director of Clinical Systems at Pfizer. "Thanks to the Compaq Professional Workstation Cluster solution, we have shortened this conversion process by a matter of months and potentially will save the company millions of dollars of lost revenue."
Windows NT-based Workstation Cluster
Compaq's new automated system - which will be deployed at Pfizer in the fourth quarter of 1998 - consists of 18 Windows NT-based Professional Workstation 8000s with four 200 MHz Pentium Pro processors each. The workstations are stacked into racks, which are then linked together to form what's called a workstation cluster. Eventually the Pfizer system will include more than 100 of the workstations, each with four processors, making it one of the largest workstation clusters in commercial use for a dedicated application.
Pfizer's electronic NDAs can consist of as many as 2 million pages. The Compaq Professional Workstation Cluster will run through these documents at a speed as fast as 60,000 pages over 24 hours. This application is scaleable, and the capability will increase as more workstations are added to the cluster, with each processor adding another page that can be processed in parallel with the rest of the document.
"The ability to convert 60,000 pages in 24 hours is a tremendous boost in productivity, enabling us to convert pages up to six times faster than our previous system," said Paul Davis, systems analyst and project manager for Pfizer. "The ability to automate this process is another key ingredient to the workstation cluster. With our previous system, we had four or five people dedicated just to keeping the system running. If one of the systems crashed, we had to start the job all over. Now, we can start the conversion of an electronic submission and know that the workstation cluster will continue until it's completed, even if one of the systems fails."
Bringing the Pieces Together
Compaq's Professional Workstation Cluster consists of more than just workstations. There were numerous pieces of software and system management tools that had to be developed and/or adapted to create the complete solution. A dedicated team of professionals from Compaq ECS worked closely with Pfizer and third-party software vendors to customize the solution to Pfizer's rigorous requirements.
Compaq's solution enabled Pfizer to maintain its existing document creation and scanning processes, which included the use of Acrobat(R) Capture(R) software from Adobe Systems Inc. Acrobat Capture is used to turn volumes of pages into Adobe PDF files, while preserving all the original fonts, formatting and images. Adobe PDF is the format of choice selected by the FDA for electronic submission of NDAs.
Working closely with Infodata Systems Inc. INFD , a company that provides document management products and services, Compaq's ECS team developed unique software code that automates the conversion of Pfizer's documents from TIFF to Adobe PDF. The expertise of Infodata's Ambia subsidiary, a leading developer of Adobe Acrobat plug-in technology, was instrumental in delivering the solution. Furthermore, due to the company's consulting expertise in document management and workflow solutions, Infodata will be the primary point of support for Pfizer. Infodata also provided Compose(R), a software product that delivers a broad range of document handling and checking capabilities.
Another software vendor key to delivering the solution was Platform Computing. Platform provided the Load Sharing Facility (LSF) software used to distribute the workload across the workstations in the cluster. Platform Computing's scalable workload management and analysis software, as well as related consulting services, ensured efficient use of the workstation cluster's immense computing resources.
The final solution required a team effort from all of the companies involved. Adobe provided the core conversion tool; Infodata provided the workflow solution; Platform provided the tools to manage the distributed computing resources; and Compaq's ECS team brought all the pieces together to ensure the combined solution was customized and optimized to perform up to Pfizer's present and future needs.
Leveraging the Workstation Cluster Solution
Although Pfizer's workstation cluster was customized for the company's individual requirements, the solution that resulted can easily be leveraged for other companies and other markets. The ability to deliver an automated system with the power of hundreds of processors for CPU-intensive jobs has wide applicability in markets such as broadcast and video, financial, computer-aided engineering, geographical information systems, chemical, insurance and many other industries.
"Our goal is to take the customized solution we provided to Pfizer, and the lessons we learned in implementing it, and package this solution for companies and industries with similar challenges to Pfizer's," said Les Crudele, Vice President and General Manager of Compaq's Workstation Division. "We have a tremendous opportunity to apply the document conversion application and principles of this workstation cluster to a much broader market. Its high-performance, parallel processing power could be applied to increasing efficiencies in many processes, such as rendering animated feature films or performing intensive analyses on mechanical or electronic designs. We've only seen the tip of the iceberg in this platform architecture's usefulness. And, because the system is infinitely scalable by simply adding more workstations, it can be expanded to meet practically any organization's requirements."
For more information on Compaq Professional Workstation products, see the following URL: compaq.com.
Company Backgrounds
Founded in 1982, Compaq Computer Corporation is a Fortune Global 100 company. Compaq is the second largest computer company in the world and the largest global supplier of personal computers. Compaq develops and markets hardware, software, solutions, and services, including industry-leading enterprise computing solutions, fault-tolerant business-critical solutions, networking and communication products, commercial desktop and portable products and consumer PCs. The company is an industry leader in environmentally friendly programs and business practices.
Compaq products are sold and supported in more than 100 countries through a network of authorized Compaq marketing partners. Customer support and information about Compaq and its products are available at compaq.com.
Based in San Jose, California, Adobe Systems Incorporated develops and supports products to help people express and use information in more imaginative and meaningful ways across all print and electronic media. For more information, see Adobe's web site at www.adobe.com.
Infodata Systems Inc., headquartered in Fairfax, VA, develops products and service that enable enterprises to share, maintain, convert and retrieve electronic documents. Using Infodata's products and services, Fortune 1000 companies and government agencies have succeeded in increasing productivity, reducing expenses and managing risk.
Platform Computing Corporation is the world leader in workload management. Founded in 1992 and headquartered in Toronto, Canada, with offices in North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific, Platform's LSF Suite enables enterprise customers to manage and support business-critical workloads in distributed heterogeneous computing environments.
The LSF Suite is used in more than 60,000 computers in more than 600 major corporations worldwide. It has been embraced as the industry standard for workload management by major system vendors such as Sun, HP, Compaq, Silicon Graphics, Digital, Fujitsu, Hitachi, NEC, and Sony, who bundle, distribute and co-market LSF Suite to their customers.
Compaq, Registered U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Product names mentioned herein may be trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective companies.
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