Overview

A global organization specializing in clinical research and regulatory support across the full lifecycle of drug development partnered with Santex to redesign its cloud governance and infrastructure management. From discovery and early-stage trials to late-phase studies, regulatory approval, and post-market follow-up, the company is recognized for its dependable, detail-oriented approach. With a strong commitment to excellence and collaboration, it supports pharmaceutical and biotech clients in navigating complex clinical and compliance landscapes.

The objective was to streamline account provisioning, strengthen the security posture, and transition from a monolithic architecture to a modular, cloud-native environment.

AWS Control Tower Account Factory for Terraform (AFT) leverages a GitOps approach to automate the provisioning and lifecycle management of AWS accounts, enabling a secure, scalable, and governed multi-account structure.

By combining DevOps best practices, cloud-native architecture, and infrastructure automation, the solution enabled the organization to scale confidently while maintaining visibility, compliance, and operational efficiency.

The Challenge

Evolving from Monolith to Modular

The company was facing three interconnected challenges:

• A centralized, monolithic architecture that slowed deployment and limited scalability.

• Complex, manual processes for managing accounts and environments.

• Gaps in infrastructure observability, backup automation, and identity control.

With more teams working in parallel and expanding workloads across regions, the company needed a secure, automated, and policy-driven platform where cloud environments could be spun up quickly, safely, and in alignment with business requirements.

Achieve strategic cost savings

As the business evolved on new foundations, the company needed to reduce costs and improve visibility into its cloud environment. The main focus is related to the missing guidelines and the lack of visibility into the cloud environment costs.

The Solution

AWS Control Tower + Terraform + DevOps Alignment

To address these needs, the Santex team designed and implemented a full cloud governance solution built on AWS Control Tower, powered by Terraform’s Account Factory.

Cost Management

To maintain operational excellence and costs aligned with business needs, the Santex team identified opportunities and implemented solutions to enhance operational cost control.

Key implementations included:

• Account Factory Automation: Terraform pipelines automatically manage account creation across organizational units, including sandbox and production environments.

• Backup & Auditing Policies: Service control policies and SDLC-aware backup strategies were embedded from day one.

• Identity & Access Management: A secure identity provider was integrated, enforcing fine-grained control policies and simplifying domain access.

• Architecture Evolution: Monolith separation was initiated, with platform improvements focused on enabling modular deployments and service isolation.

• Infrastructure Security & Observability: Cloud infrastructure was secured with monitoring, backup policies, and automated deployment tracking.

• DevOps & Platform Integration: Application deployments were fully automated through the platform layer, reducing friction between DevOps and engineering teams.

• Cloud Intelligence Dashboards: Implemented CUDOS and CORA AWS dashboards with centralized data collection across the organization’s Control Towers.

• Cost Structure Optimization: Transitioned to a mix of fixed and variable (daily) costs to enable deeper analysis of operational expenses based on usage patterns.

• Overspending Control: Reviewed performance, usage, and cost metrics to identify overspending and implement targeted cost optimization initiatives.

• Usage Time Optimization: Reduced resource usage time in alignment with each environment’s lifecycle.

• Storage and Backup Lifecycle Management: Established proper storage lifecycle policies and backup controls to optimize costs and ensure efficient resource allocation.

Key Outcomes:

From Framework to Functionality

70% faster deployment cycles
New cloud accounts are provisioned in minutes with governance and policies built in through Control Tower and Terraform automation.

60% fewer production incidents
Automated deployments integrated into DevOps workflows reduced manual intervention and improved delivery reliability.

50% increase in development team efficiency
Teams shifted from operational firefighting to higher-value product delivery.

Up to 40% reduction in cloud operational costs
Improved resource utilization, lifecycle policies, and FinOps practices eliminated unnecessary infrastructure spend.

Security-first infrastructure
Centralized identity and access management policies reduced risk across the multi-account environment.

Modernized architecture foundation
The transition from monolithic to modular, cloud-native architecture enabled scalability and team autonomy.