Case Study
Scaling Medidata Solutions through Agile Engineering Leadership
Overview
Medidata Solutions, following the acquisition of Chita/Daybreak, partnered with a specialized team led by Jozef Antony to scale technical operations, transform their MVP into a fully functional product, and integrate deeply with the Medidata ecosystem. The team delivered innovative cloud-based content management solutions, fully integrated with Box.com, designed to address compliance and content management challenges in the life sciences sector.
The Challenge
Chita/Daybreak faced significant early-stage challenges:
– Scaling the technology team to find product-market fit.
– Transforming the MVP into a production-ready system.
– Gaining access to deep technical expertise for complex integrations.
– Meeting rigorous security and compliance requirements.
Security foundations included 128-bit SSL encryption, Verisign authentication via HTTPS, daily testing via ScanAlertTM Hacker SafeTM, and virus scanning using Clam AntiVirus (ClamAV).
The Approach
Led by Jozef Antony, the engagement involved a phased scaling approach:
– Initial onboarding of 3 senior engineers to speed up development.
– Setup of automated build pipelines, cloud deployments, and early demo environments for faster client feedback.
– Gradual expansion to a team of 15 developers, backend and frontend engineers, testers, and DevOps specialists.
Key contributions included:
– Integration with Box.com for cloud content management.
– Migration of millions of documents and thousands of users.
– Deployment of multi-tenant features and migration from AWS EC2 to AWS ECS.
– Building support for specialized life sciences workflows (eTMF, End of Study Media).
Technical Tasks
Major technical activities included:
– Integration of Box.com APIs for document sync and collaboration.
– PDF generation with watermarks and metadata using ASPOSE libraries.
– Implementation of advanced user and role management with ACL controls.
– Full-text search via ElasticSearch.
– Development of mobile applications for iOS platforms.
– Document versioning, workflows, comparison, rendering, and e-signatures.
– Audit logging, reporting, telemetry, and monitoring.
– Migration from legacy document systems to AWS infrastructure with NuoDB and MySQL.
Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) and Release Model
The team adopted a robust Agile SDLC, featuring:
– Formal release cycles with high traceability.
– Use of Bitbucket (Git), Jira, and Jenkins for CI/CD processes.
– Extensive automated testing for code quality assurance.
– Rigorous documentation standards to support compliance and validation requirements.
Technologies and Tools
The technology stack included:
– Java 8/11, Spring Boot, Spring Security, Hibernate.
– Git/GitHub for version control.
– MySQL, NuoDB for database management.
– AWS EC2, ECS, S3, ElasticSearch.
– FreeMarker, ASPOSE PDF/Word/Excel libraries.
– JUnit, Apache Tika, Jenkins for build and test automation.
Key Success Factors
– Rapid Team Scaling: Grew from 3 to 17 engineers across backend, frontend, DevOps, and QA.
– Smooth Communication: Daily standups, detailed design documents, Jira-based tracking, and ad-hoc collaboration.
– Technical Expertise: Provided specialized knowledge across cloud integration, document management, and AWS operations.
– Strategic Integration: Seamlessly aligned Chita/Daybreak systems into Medidata’s broader enterprise ecosystem.
Results
– Faster Time-to-Market: Enabled rapid feature delivery and market validation.
– Reduced Development Costs: Provided high-quality resources at optimized costs.
– Expanded Product Capabilities: Supported 60+ client organizations efficiently.
– Strengthened Compliance: Delivered traceable, secure, and auditable systems aligned with life sciences industry standards.
Job Done
Through expert leadership and a globally coordinated development model, Medidata Solutions achieved rapid scalability, stronger market positioning, and robust system integration. The partnership exemplified how agile engineering and deep domain expertise can drive digital transformation in regulated industries.