A Japanese global pharmaceutical innovator undertook a strategic modernization initiative to transform its cloud infrastructure automation and remove bottlenecks to scalable, governed delivery.

Challenge: Fragmented Automation, Limited Visibility, and Inconsistent Lifecycle Management
Before Torque, pharmaceutical’s cloud infrastructure automation faced a series of interrelated challenges that severely limited scalability, efficiency, and governance:

• Manual lifecycle management of infrastructure resulted in higher operational cost and cloud cost over-runs
• Automation was managed via Jenkins pipelines that were outdated and untested, due to lack of lower-level environments
• Terraform was used without enterprise-level controls creating inconsistencies across environments and introducing difficulty in managing the states of those environments
• No self-service GUI was available for Infrastructure Automation, increasing reliance on DevOps engineers and leading to bottlenecks
• Lack of a centralized control plane and centralized automation governance
• Manual processes slowed provisioning time, increased overhead and increased operational risk
• The combination of the above challenges stifled innovation on new projects, usage of new approaches/technology & increased time to market

Strategic Challenge Summary
These fragmented tools and manual workflows created operational silos, high dependency on DevOps, and inconsistent delivery across cloud platforms. Script-heavy processes spanning Jenkins, Terraform, and unmanaged CI/CD pipelines introduced audit risk, configuration drift, and cost inefficiencies.

Critically, the absence of a unified control plane or self-service access model prevented scalability due to the DevOps bottlenecks. Infrastructure delivery became a recurring bottleneck, delaying R&D cycles, impeding global standardization, and limiting agility across teams.

Torque wasn’t selected to solve a single pain point, rather, it was adopted because it addresses the compound effects of these interconnected issues. By centralizing orchestration, governance, and lifecycle automation, Torque enables the pharmaceutical to shift from reactive delivery to proactive, governed, and scalable infrastructure operations.

Key Capabilities Implemented:

• Multi-Cloud Self-Service Provisioning:Drag-and-drop self-service Blueprint catalog-based UI enabled secure, frictionless provisioning without end-user infrastructure expertise.
• Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC):Standardized, reusable templates ensure consistency and reduce drift.
• Policy-as-Code Governance:Enforce compliance, security, and cost guardrails across the environment lifecycle.
• Centralized Control Plane:Unifies visibility and orchestration across clouds, teams, and environments.
• Day-2 Operations Automation:Torque offers Drift detection, live environment updates, cost control, and impact-aware lifecycle workflows.

Target Architecture: Torque is integrated with GitHub, triggering automated provisioning flows for AWS and Azure via Torque agents. Workflows are tied to ServiceNow for approval gating, and secrets management is embedded to enforce enterprise grade security and control. Auto-healing and environment cleanup ensures cost containment and operational hygiene.

Business Impact

Differentiation and Strategic Fit: Quali Torque was chosen over AWS/Azure-native tools and legacy platforms for its architectural flexibility and strategic fit with the pharmaceutical’s modernization goals.

While other tools offered isolated capabilities, like environment provisioning, CI/CD integration, or Terraform orchestration, only Torque delivers a unified, full-stack solution across the automation lifecycle:

• End-to-End Environment Delivery: Torque streamlines everything from environment provisioning to infrastructure teardown, wrapping Terraform automation alongside multiple other supported IaC technologies into fully governed, auditable blueprints with minimal DevOps involvement.
• Policy-First Governance Model: Competing platforms offered role-based access, but lacked real-time policy enforcement, drift detection, or lifecycle governance, areas in which Torque delivers automation continuity and risk mitigation.
• Developer-Ready UX: Unlike infrastructure-heavy tools, Torque provides a clean, GUI-based, drag-and-drop provisioning experience, dramatically reducing the learning curve for non-DevOps users.
• True Multi-Cloud Orchestration: Torque enables centralized automation across AWS, Azure and other Cloud and On-Prem platforms from a single control plane, critical for the pharmaceutical’s hybrid cloud vision.
• Day-2 Operational Maturity: Other solutions stopped at deployment. While Torque extended value through post-deployment automation, cost control, blueprint updates, drift remediation, and lifecycle cleanup.

The result was not just infrastructure acceleration, but operational transformation, freeing the pharmaceutical from ad-hoc scripting and enabling scalable, secure self-service for Dev, Test and production teams alike.

• Integrated Multi-Cloud Control: Unified governance across AWS, Azure, Terraform, and GitHub from a single platform.
• Modular, Reusable Blueprints: Environment definitions evolved with infrastructure changes, no brittle scripts.
• ServiceNow and GitHub Integration: Enabled seamless CI/CD orchestration and provisioning governance.
• AI-Driven Lifecycle: Drift detection, auto-healing, and cleanup workflows delivered operational excellence.
• Security-First Posture: Centralized secrets management and approval workflows reduced risk exposure.

Deployment and Commercial Notes
Torque was piloted under a licensing and deployment engagement facilitated by key MSP partner serving as the implementation and integration partner. Over a 3-to-4-month period, the pharmaceutical’s internal teams collaborated with the partner to design a future-state architecture built on centralized orchestration and policy-driven automation. This model significantly reduced reliance on DevOps bottlenecks and enabled broader, self-service cloud access across R&D and infrastructure teams.

Use Case Focus: Pharma-Grade Infrastructure at Speed: This initiative was critical to the pharmaceutical’s strategic imperative to standardize, secure, and scale its infrastructure delivery across teams and platforms. With Torque, the DSI Infrastructure Team enabled a consistent developer experience while embedding policy enforcement, reporting, and cost controls natively into infrastructure workflows.

Summary: The pharmaceutical’s modernization with Torque signals more than tool selection, it reflects a strategic commitment to software-defined, self-service infrastructure. By abstracting complexity and centralizing control, Torque became an enabler of innovation, resilience, and agility across global pharma R&D and production ecosystem.

Supporting Resources

• Quali Torque – Infrastructure-as-Code & Automation Overview
  https://www.quali.com/infrastructure-as-code/
  Explains how Torque turns existing IaC into reusable environments with self‑service provisioning, visibility, day‑2 operations, and cost control, all core elements of the customer outcome.
• Quali Torque – Cloud Governance & Management
  https://www.quali.com/cloud-governance-management/
  Highlights automated guardrails and policy‑driven governance, directly relevant to the customers need for consistent enforcement and centralized control.
• Quali Torque – DevOps Acceleration & Developer Productivity
  https://www.quali.com/devops/
  Reinforces how Torque’s self‑service and AI orchestration improves productivity and breaks DevOps bottlenecks, directly aligned with the customer’s challenge and strategic goals.
• Scale & Optimize Software Demo & POC Environments with Torque
  https://www.quali.com/software-demo-environments/
  Useful for illustrating how Torque accelerates environment delivery and optimizes operational costs, relevant even though the customer’s focus is internal automation rather than customer demos.
• Quali Buyer’s Guide – Quali Torque Use Cases & Value
  https://www.quali.com/blog/quali-torque-buyers-guide/
  Provides an end‑to‑end overview of why the customer choose Torque, typical problems solved, and expected outcomes, helpful for framing the customer’s decision and impact narrative.