Cloud Infrastructure

Customer Update on Veeva’s Cloud Infrastructure

Updated: March 2018

Veeva delivered its first cloud applications to life sciences companies in 2007. At that time, public cloud infrastructure services such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) were just emerging and not ready for global enterprises or regulated applications. Therefore, Veeva built its operations infrastructure in a managed hosting model. In this model, Veeva leased specific hardware devices, network capabilities, and managed services from managed hosting providers.

Today, public cloud services from companies such as Amazon, Google, and Microsoft have achieved global enterprise scale and the ability to support complex regulatory and compliance requirements. Using public cloud services allows solutions providers like Veeva to leverage the most advanced infrastructure and provide a more innovative, scalable, global, predictable, and secure environment.

After a comprehensive evaluation of public cloud vendors, Veeva determined AWS is the right primary cloud infrastructure provider to meet Veeva customers’ growing needs as we look to the future.

When will the move to AWS occur?

Timing for the move of Veeva’s application services to AWS is as follows:

  • Veeva CRM – Veeva CRM transactional data will remain on salesforce.com’s infrastructure, and will therefore not be impacted by the AWS move. Only the Veeva CRM application server and supporting infrastructure is moving.

    The Veeva CRM 17R2 release in July 2017 was the final major release on managed hosting. All customer orgs have been moved and currently reside on the AWS infrastructure.

  • Veeva Vault – The Veeva Vault 17R2 release in August 2017 was the final major release on managed hosting. All customer Vaults have been successfully moved to AWS.

  • Veeva Network – The Veeva Network 17R3 release in December 2017 will be the final major release on managed hosting. The move to AWS will occur during a weekend in April 2018, prior to the 18R1 release of Veeva Network. Customers will be notified a minimum of 30 days prior to the actual move date. There will be a brief, scheduled downtime window during the move.

Where will customer data reside?

To ensure conformance with local regulations, application data will remain in the same geographic regions — U.S. (West and East Coast), Europe (Germany and Ireland), and Japan — and are subject to the same security controls as currently implemented in managed hosting. Data will be backed up within the same region as the primary processing region.

Veeva CRM transactional data will remain on salesforce.com’s infrastructure with no change in geographic location of the primary processing location or the backup location.

What about validation, compliance, and data privacy?

Veeva’s Quality and Compliance team has ensured that the new AWS infrastructure is qualified and that critical regulated functionality of the Veeva applications is validated on AWS infrastructure. Equivalent procedural controls, security frameworks, and monitoring infrastructure will be applied to the production environment to ensure the products are maintained in a validated state.

AWS is Privacy Shield certified and has entered into the EU Model Clauses and a Business Associate Agreement (HIPAA) with Veeva.

The following compliance related documentation will be available to customers prior to initial moves:

  • AWS Supplier Audit
  • AWS Certifications
  • AWS Project Plan
  • Infrastructure Qualification
  • Product Testing on AWS Infrastructure
  • Validation Summary Report

What changes will customers experience due to the move to AWS?

Customers will not experience any change in application behavior as a result of the move to AWS.

What do customers need to do prior to the move to AWS?

Customer’s may be required to “white list” new Internet-Protocol (IP) addresses to access the applications in AWS. These IP addresses will be documented and communicated well ahead of the planned moves to allow for the changes to be made if needed.

Who should I contact if I have more questions?

If you have additional questions, please contact your Veeva Customer Success Manager (CSM), or your Account Executive.