The Roche Group goes Google

Posted by Dr. Alan Hippe, CFO and CIO, the Roche Group

Editors note: Today’s guest blogger is Dr. Alan Hippe, CFO and CIO of the Roche Group, one of the world’s leading research-focused healthcare groups in the fields of pharmaceuticals and diagnostics. See what other organizations that have gone Google have to say.

The Roche Group is a leader in research-focused healthcare with combined strengths in pharmaceuticals and diagnostics. For over 110 years, Roche has been pioneering the discovery, development, production and marketing of novel healthcare solutions. Our focus has always been on innovation.

For the last two and a half years, our two different email and calendaring platforms have often been an obstacle for effective collaboration. To end these platform interoperability issues, the Roche Corporate Executive Committee made the decision that all employees will move to Google Apps as the single common platform for the Roche Group.

When we evaluated new cloud-based solutions, Roche’s Corporate Executive Committee was impressed with the outstanding service and rapid innovation of Google Apps. Google Apps will enable over 90,000 employees to work better together from anywhere.

The way our employees communicate and collaborate is diverse, and our employees are spread across over 140 countries. The integrated and socially-focused way that Google Apps enables collaboration is very compelling, and we expect this to not only bring our company closer together, but give us a strategic advantage. Additionally, being able to deploy Google Apps by simply enabling them via a control panel versus planning for and deploying complex infrastructure in our datacenters will help us focus on our core business -- helping save patients' lives

Employees will be able to access their email and documents from any web-enabled device, without using remote access systems such as VPN. This will make it easier for employees to work from home or on the go and it will reduce the strain on our IT support teams. Removing barriers to communication and innovation while enhancing mobile access is a key part of our Roche IT strategy.

Roche’s history is one of innovation and progress and we believe that aligns well with the capabilities provided by Google Apps. We’re excited to begin moving our employees to Google Apps and we’re confident that Google’s experience in successfully moving other large organizations to the cloud will make this a smooth transition.