Edwards Lifesciences embraces innovation with Office 365

Edwards Lifesciences embraces innovation with Office 365
Company using Yammer, Skype for Business and Azure Active Directory to improve processes

Toby Ingleton |


Edwards Lifesciences has enhanced its IT operations and enabled a collaborative, modern workplace with Microsoft Office 365.

Founded in the 1950s in California, Edwards Lifesciences provides medical technologies across a range of areas, including blood management, infection control and surgical recovery.

To help drive mobility, agility and innovation within the company, Edwards Lifesciences turned to Microsoft’s technology.

“Collaboration is at the heart of the corporate ethos at Edwards, so much so that the user-friendly services within Office 365, such as Yammer, have already gone viral within the company,” said Sal Chiovari, CIO for Edwards Lifesciences. “I’m thrilled to see employees using the enterprise social network to ask questions and create a dialogue across our global network.”

Skype for Business Online has been embraced as the company’s primary tool for meetings and collaboration.

“I love the whiteboard capability for large meetings and problem-solving discussions with colleagues around the globe,” Chiovari explained. “And we’re using Microsoft Surface Hub devices to augment our video calls with a great interactive whiteboarding experience. As we begin using Skype for Business PSTN conferencing with dial-in capabilities, it will provide a new level of effortless communication in an environment that meets the high demands for security in our industry.”

In a highly regulated industry such as life sciences, security naturally played a role in Chiovari and his team’s decision around which technology to embrace.

“Security played a major role in our decision to go with Office 365 and Enterprise Mobility + Security,” he said. “Our strategy is simple: when you provide employees with a protected environment and user-friendly, leading-edge tools, they won’t feel compelled to pursue rogue IT. The rich set of productivity apps within Office 365 addresses all the collaboration scenarios that employees had tried to fill with third-party solutions. And we take advantage of rights management and data loss prevention capabilities within Office 365 to protect our information, so that collaboration happens in a highly secure environment.”

Edwards Lifesciences is also using Azure Active Directory Premium in Enterprise Mobility + Security to enable safe mobile access to data, allowing for a secure and productive workplace in which staff can collaborate.

OneDrive for Business and SharePoint Online are also being harnessed to share documents and data, while Office 365 ProPlus lets staff enjoy the same work experience across multiple devices.

“I see a paradigm shift in IT at Edwards Lifesciences with the deployment of easy-to-use Office 365 services that usher in a new way of working for our employees, and free up time for IT to focus on more strategic initiatives and serve as stronger business partners,” Chiovari added. “We’re using the Office 365 platform to take us to the next level of mobility, productivity and security, so this amazing company can continue to innovate, creating medical devices that improve the health of people everywhere.”

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