Innovation: from AI in the cloud to IoT at the edge
Life sciences startup Peptone put pharma in the spotlight at the most recent KubeCon in London, taking the keynote stage to talk about using AI for drug discovery, all running on Kubernetes.
Indeed, pharmaceutical companies large and small today are doing incredible things with cloud native technologies. And not just the GPU-intensive AI/ML workloads like protein folding in the cloud or data center, but a host of potentially less glitzy use cases too.
Pharma is essentially a manufacturing industry, so like other manufacturers in less regulated sectors, there are factory-related breakthrough concepts like digital twins and predictive maintenance bringing innovation to plant operations at the edge.
Just as “Industry 4.0” became a manufacturing buzzword over the past decade, so “Pharma 4.0” is doing the rounds too. Pharma 4.0 is all about bringing Industry 4.0 principles – connectivity, automation, and data-driven insights – into highly regulated plant operations.
In this new world, comparatively ancient operational technology (OT) concepts like SCADA, historically based on proprietary stacks, are now opening up and becoming part of a smarter, modern architecture.
The end result? Edge clusters in pharma plants are effectively becoming the new runtime for many critical applications, acting as mini private clouds on-site. (Read more about how pharma 4.0 and edge computing are connected in this blog from our partner Stratus).
With such transformative opportunities across every process in your business, it’s an exciting time for the industry. Right?
Bringing the future to life
If you’re part of a platform engineering or IT operations team in pharma, you know that behind every breakthrough innovation, there’s a lot of heavy lifting — especially when it comes to managing the infrastructure that powers it all.
There’s no question that Kubernetes is the only real choice for modern application infrastructure. It has emerged as the de facto layer for managing workloads across cloud, edge, and even air-gapped factory environments. Whether it's cloud-driven drug discovery or the industrial IoT (IIoT) deployment on the shop floor, Kubernetes provides the necessary consistency, scalability, and reliability for modern cloud native pharma applications.
As one industry CTO put it: “Why have we grown our use of Kubernetes? It’s the ability to scale seamlessly. It’s agnostic, at least from a cloud platform perspective.”
What’s more, as vendors of traditional pharma and manufacturing applications like MES move from VMs to containers, this encourages even the most cautious of pharma businesses to embrace K8s.
But Kubernetes is both a blessing and a challenge.
Managing clusters at scale is complex, especially across R&D environments, factory sites, edge locations, and global data centers and clouds.
Five challenges you can’t ignore
Let’s be honest: even experienced teams are struggling to make Kubernetes "easy." You only have to take a look at research like the State of Production Kubernetes report to find that everyone is wrestling with complexity. And in pharma, there are some unique challenges that make it even tougher:
1. Managing both containers and VMs
Even as the containerization of applications like manufacturing execution systems (MES) accelerates, many pharma companies still rely on virtual machines for critical legacy applications. Managing both worlds separately means extra complexity, operational inefficiencies, and gaps in security and governance.
2. AI and edge computing pressure
AI isn’t just happening in the cloud — pharma companies are increasingly deploying AI models close to the edge, in factory floors, laboratories, and remote research sites. Those edge clusters need to be reliable, secure, and manageable — without sending a veteran K8s ninja onsite to manage every update.
3. Inconsistent cluster management across teams and sites
In theory, K8s gives you a path to a consistent, cloud-like environment for manufacturing applications across all sites, from a vaccine production plant in Texas to a tablet packaging facility in Singapore.
In reality, different teams — R&D, manufacturing, commercial — spin up Kubernetes clusters for different use cases. Often, they do it differently: different tools, configurations, security policies. That inconsistency becomes a nightmare when it’s time to patch a vulnerability, enforce compliance, or troubleshoot an incident.
4. Scaling with small teams
Most platform teams aren’t massive, and pharma is no exception. What’s more, talent scarcity is real. Skilled Kubernetes engineers are hard to find and harder to keep. One platform engineer in the healthcare sector told us:
“We’ve got an older workforce, we’ve got more legacy expertise than we do newer expertise. Unfortunately, we depend on contractors.”
And yet you’re asked to deliver global, enterprise-grade Kubernetes services across dozens of sites. There’s no room for inefficient manual work or slow processes; it’s essential to automate and simplify wherever possible, reducing the dependency on scarce skills.
5. Tight governance and compliance needs
You don’t need us to tell you that pharma is a regulated industry, and that has big impact on operations. Data integrity, system uptime, traceability — they’re non-negotiable under GxP regulations and other standards. Pharma can’t afford to play fast and loose with cluster configuration, access control, or auditability.
Put it all together? When you have a small team, a ton of regulatory pressure, and a business that's moving faster than ever, the traditional DIY approach to Kubernetes management simply doesn’t cut it anymore.
But the good news is, there are modern Kubernetes management approaches that can tackle these challenges head-on — and open up exciting new possibilities for pharma innovation.
A better approach to Kubernetes management
Imagine if your platform team could:
- Provision and manage both containerized applications and VMs seamlessly, through a single platform, without compromising governance or efficiency.
- Take advantage of AI capabilities at the edge, with clusters that are easy to deploy, monitor, and update remotely.
- Deliver consistent, standardized Kubernetes clusters across different dev teams, factory floors, and business units, with baked-in security and governance.
- Manage Kubernetes at scale across multiple sites, applying patches quickly and enforcing policies automatically, without adding headcount.
- Empower innovation by giving development and research teams self-service access to Kubernetes resources, without creating security or compliance risks.
All of this is achievable today with the right platform engineering mindset — and the right tools. There’s a whole category of products called enterprise Kubernetes management platforms, sometimes called “edge management and orchestration” (EMO) platforms when specific to edge environments like the shop floor.
We believe these platforms are critical if you’re to move from treating Kubernetes as a one-off DIY project for every site or use case, to a repeatable operating model. A good EKMP should provide:
- Cluster lifecycle management automation: easy provisioning, upgrades, scaling, and decommissioning — all with policy-driven controls.
- Multi-environment support: multicloud, on-premises, bare metal, edge, GPUs — all managed consistently.
- VM and container support side-by-side: no need for parallel infrastructures.
- Declarative governance: set policies once, enforce them everywhere automatically.
- Edge-ready capabilities: lightweight footprints, air-gapped support, and centralized visibility and control.
- Operational scalability: empowering small teams to manage hundreds of clusters easily.
In short, modern Kubernetes management platforms let pharma companies stop babysitting clusters and start focusing on what really matters: driving scientific and operational innovation.
Ready to take the next step?
Pharma companies like yours have always been pioneers when it comes to applying technology to solve hard problems.
With the right Kubernetes management approach, you can continue to drive innovation in your business — delivering the resilient, scalable infrastructure that powers AI, digitized manufacturing, and smarter operations everywhere from the lab to the plant to the office.
Cloud native complexity is unavoidable, but it’s also solvable, with automation empowering platform teams to deliver clusters quickly and consistently.
If you’re ready to find out how, come talk to us and we can share our experiences helping some of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies get the most from Kubernetes.