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SAS to Dataiku Migration Drives Faster Clinical Insights & Cost Savings

Life Sciences Dataiku Data Science & Machine Learning 

By migrating from SAS to Dataiku, Infocepts helped a global pharma company reduce 30% analytics costs, enhance agility, and accelerate clinical trial simulations by 20X.

The Challenge

A leading pharma company sought to migrate from SAS to Dataiku to enhance code performance, enable agile development, and leverage modern open-source technologies. Their existing system posed several challenges:

  • High Licensing Costs – Maintaining SAS licenses was costly, with additional expenses for essential libraries not included in standard packages.
  • Prolonged Execution Times – Clinical trial simulations took up to 168 hours (one week), delaying insights and slowing decision-making.
  • Limited System Flexibility – The legacy platform restricted agility, making it difficult to develop, modify, and scale statistical models to meet evolving business demands.

The Solution

To overcome these challenges, Infocepts executed a structured migration strategy, leveraging Dataiku, Python, and Kubernetes-based architecture to drive efficiency. Key solution components included:

  • Code Conversion & Optimization – Migrated SAS code to Python, replacing proprietary libraries with open-source alternatives to reduce costs while improving maintainability and efficiency.
  • Seamless Platform Integration – Integrated Python-based workflows into Dataiku, ensuring smooth execution, user-friendly deployment, and enhanced version control. This allowed data scientists and non-technical users to collaborate effectively.
  • Performance Acceleration with Kubernetes – Leveraged Dataiku’s parallel processing and Kubernetes orchestration, enabling simulations to run across multiple nodes concurrently, significantly reducing execution time.
  • Modular & Scalable Development – Adopted a modular coding approach, enhancing code reusability and enabling seamless integration with other data pipelines and enterprise systems.

By implementing this structured migration strategy, Infocepts enabled the client to modernize their analytics infrastructure, significantly improving cost efficiency, execution speed, and development flexibility.

The Outcome

The transition to Dataiku-powered analytics resulted in transformational improvements across cost, efficiency, and operational agility:

  • 30% Cost Reduction – Lowered licensing and operational expenses by replacing SAS with open-source solutions, delivering substantial long-term savings.
  • 20X Faster Execution – Simulation runtime reduced from 168 hours to just 8 hours, accelerating clinical insights and decision-making.
  • Boosted Productivity & Agility – A more flexible development environment allowed teams to iterate models faster, enhancing innovation and collaboration.
  • Improved Simulation Efficiency – The modernized framework enabled automated execution, reducing manual intervention and streamlining processes.
Accelerate your Dataiku migration with Infocepts—seamless, scalable, and AI-ready. Let’s talk!

About the Client

Our client is a global pharmaceutical company focused on innovative therapies in oncology, urology, and immunology. Committed to advancing medical research, they leverage biotechnology and data-driven solutions to improve patient outcomes worldwide.

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