Time to Replace Your LIMS?
Replacing a legacy LIMS system is no small matter
Ray Stonecipher
Owing to ongoing global consolidation, stricter regulatory environments and maturity of Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) technology, companies are opting to replace their existing legacy systems with leading commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) LIMS solutions. According to the latest study by the ARC Advisory Group, the demand for LIMS replacements will be at least as large as that for new LIMS systems.
Replacing a legacy LIMS system is no small matter. Many companies have years of know-how and historical data stored in their existing system and this information cannot be discarded, it must be migrated to the new implementation. STARLIMS has a record of not only providing first time LIMS owners with successful implementations, but for straightforward conversions of legacy knowledge and information systems to the STARLIMS system.
Why replace?
Highly customized implementation
In most legacy and first-generation LIMS systems, the technology and the business rules components are compiled together and can not be separated. Due to the dynamic nature of business, users have required their vendors to customize the program code in order to meet the new business requirements. In parallel to this, the vendor makes modifications to the code in order to incorporate new IT technology.
These two independent developments are incompatible with each other, thus preventing the user from upgrading to the latest technology while losing touch with IT trends (blue line in Figure 1). Separation from the vendor’s direction makes it more and more difficult to modify business rules. So, in time, the system not only loses touch with technology but with the lab’s own requirements as well (red line in Figure 1). This episodic pattern is very common with legacy and highly customized systems requiring periodic investments in major upgrades (as reflected by the green line in Figure 1). These investments have a significant impact on the LIMS’ total cost of ownership (TCO) and make it difficult to project a positive return on the investment.
Figure 1: Total cost of ownership of a legacy LIMS
Loss of key personnel
Strict development and validation procedures adhering to industry standard methodologies pose an extremely heavy burden on in-house development teams. As such, homegrown information systems are aptly recognized as no longer cost-effective. A turnover of key personnel instrumental in the original establishment of the legacy system leaves the company seriously exposed. Legacy systems often lack ample documentation and “future proofing” mechanisms that will allow the company to continue trusting it with its most critical quality data.
Vendor refocused on other industries
As the LIMS market matures, a number of vendors regarded as early dominators of this marketplace have refocused their LIMS development to a limited number of defined industries. These trends are clearly recognized through some of the vendor’s marketing messages emphasizing their new focal point. More important is the lack of ongoing industry-specific enhancements to some of the LIMS products that may be regarded as driven by users from the now “non strategic” industries. As a result, many of these customers face the alternative of further customizing their already highly tailored system, or opting for a COTS LIMS from a vendor with a proven track record of “future proofing” their installed base.
Globalization and company consolidation
Globalization and reorganization in all manufacturing industries are driven by the need to improve the bottom line and proximity to markets which have led to consolidation and mergers of multinational companies such as Exxon and Mobil, Chevron and Texaco, Total.Petrofina and Elf, Glaxo Wellcome and SmithKline Beecham, to name a few. QA and IT executives of the newly consolidated operation often will find several LIMS systems implemented at the disparate sites posing them with yet another opportunity for cost savings and unification.
STARLIMS migration platform
From its very beginnings in the late ’80s, STARLIMS poised itself as a platform for conversions of legacy systems. Its multi-tiered architecture completely separates the technology, business rules and database components from each other.
The independence of components in multi-tier systems facilitates a complete partition of development and maintenance tasks. The vendor can supply new advanced features to the technology tier. These enhanced features can be quickly validated and distributed throughout the enterprise without compromising the business rules or database components. This assures that the application reflects a high level of technological adoption (blue line in Figure 3). Similarly, users can modify the business rules component to meet the needs of a dynamic work environment without parting from the vendor’s general development leading to a proficient match to the business needs (red line in Figure 3). At this stage dollar wise, the TCO (green line in Figure 3) declines to the level of ongoing maintenance costs.
Figure 2: STARLIMS Life Cycle
Figure 3: Total cost of ownership of a commercial-off-the-shelf LIMS
The migration process
1. Developing the “To Be” implementation based on current business rules.
The new LIMS implementation should not be hampered by legacy business rules as these could be migrated and enhanced within the new implementation.
2. Implementing the new system and business rules.
The new implementation should be applied and tested prior to the migration of legacy data. In the case of STARLIMS, this means that the implementation has passed both factory and site acceptance testing.
3. Mapping legacy “As Is” data model to the new implementation.
In this phase, the existing data is mapped to the new LIMS data model. For those fields that are not directly mapped to the new data model, legacy fields are added to the new implementation.
4. Performing data migration.
Once mapping is complete, an automated routine is used to import the legacy data into the new system. The legacy data can be provided through a variety of means including; csv files, database backups or SQL dumps.
5. Testing and validation of the migration.
Testing is performed to validate that the data stored in the new system matches the data in the legacy system. This involves the creation of a migration test plan and running vigorous testing once the migration has taken place.
6. Legacy data publication.
Following successful data conversion and parallel running of the new system, the project team gains a real-world view of the data sources and workflow efficiency. This allows refinment of previous decisions and facilitates a final decision about which of the legacy data is to remain as “read only” and which data should be published for continued modification.
Migration in practice
STARLIMS has gained recognition for straightforward conversions of disparate legacy systems in various disciplines around the world.
Migrating 25 years of environmental science
The Pacific Environmental Science Centre (PESC) is Environment Canada’s premier science center in Western Canada and provides the core laboratory and field operations required for the department’s regional programs. The PESC had been using a mainframe-based LIMS initially developed in the 1970s encompassing 105 applications designed throughout its history. The STARLIMS platform’s comprehensive configuration tools allowed complete migration of 25 years of legacy database programming into a modern COTS within 117 days.
Cloning best practices at NutraSweet
NutraSweet’s Quality Control and Research laboratories play a critical role in the company. As such, NutraSweet decided to replace its legacy laboratory information management system (based on a customized version of the Beckman Coulter LIMS) with a modern solution that will be easily adaptable to its dynamic requirements while securing the accumulated knowledge and cloning of its established workflow processes.
“The NutraSweet Company’s former LIMS system utilized older technology, but many of the features that we’ve become accustomed to using are nonetheless complex,” Stated Kevin Griffin Database Administrator at The NutraSweet Company. “The STARLIMS implementation team has been able to configure the application to perform all of our complex tasks after only brief phone calls or short WebEx sessions. My team members thought many of our current system processes were impossible to duplicate, but these thoughts were erased by the responsiveness of STARLIMS project members.”
Future-Proofing an oil refining LIMS
“We have grown out of our old LIMS; with STARLIMS functionality we now have a solution that conforms to our current needs and with its flexibility we can modify it as our needs change,” said Worrarat Phutthuworapattana, Laboratory Manager of Thailand based Alliance Refining Co Ltd. following replacement of their 8 years old Applied Biosystems’ SQL*LIMS ®.
Alliance Refining is an operating alliance between Star Petroleum Refining Company Limited, a joint venture between Caltex , the Petroleum Authority of Thailand and Rayong Refinery Company Limited itself a joint venture between Shell and the Petroleum Authority of Thailand. The replacement is yielding both tangible and non tangible benefits including higher laboratory throughput, improved resource utilization as a direct result of STARLIMS added functionality, as well as higher job satisfaction due to the use of state-of-the-art information processing and better service management tools made available with the new solution.
Summary
LIMS users expect flexible systems to support their business needs, with prompt implementation times and a reduced TCO throughout the lifecycle. Increasing the functionality of solutions can make the purchase decision easier.
STARLIMS’ unique ability to apply either customer developed structures or its own for managing both static and dynamic data allows customers to rapidly adopt latest technology without conciliation of best practices already available in their legacy systems.
STARLIMS’ tiered architecture together with its un-compromised customer commitment, have earned it industry recognition for rapidly delivering complete cost-effective migrated LIMS solutions that last.
Ray Stonecipher is Executive Director of Professional Services at STARLIMS Corporation. He may be contacted at [email]sales@starlims.com[/email]
<a target='_blank' href='http://www.starlims.com/" target=_top> STARLIMS Corporation
4000 Hollywood Blvd., # 515 South, Hollywood, FL 33021-6755
“This article originally appeared in the May 2004 issue of Scientific Computing & Instrumentation magazine. Reprinted with permission by Scientific Computing & Instrumentation, a Reed Business Information publication.”
