Touchlight.
Network overhaul at Touchlight Genetics to connect bandwidth with biotechnology.
Touchlight Genetics is an innovation-driven contract development and manufacturing organisation pioneering enzymatic GMP DNA production to enable the genetic medicine revolution. With an FDA Drug Master File accepted in 2022 and the world’s first cell-free DNA GMP license granted in 2025, Touchlight’s enzymatic DNA technology sits at the forefront of AAV, mRNA, DNA vaccine, and gene-editing development. Its state-of-the-art facility was recognised by ISPE’s Facility of the Year Awards (FOYA) for Innovation.
With multiple client programs already in the clinic, Touchlight provides evidence-based, synthetic DNA manufacturing solutions that offer scalable, sustainable alternatives to plasmid DNA for all stages of development.
Built on the conviction that DNA underpins the future of medicine, Touchlight addresses the limitations of traditional bacterial fermentation - slow, costly, and hard to scale for growing demand. Founded in 2007, Touchlight continues to advance DNA production technology to support the next generation of genetic therapies.
The business need.
“As the world’s first approved cGMP cell-free DNA manufacturer, we operate at the forefront of developing today’s most advanced therapies,” explains Oliver Goodwin, Head of IT at Touchlight Genetics.
The company conducts this groundbreaking work across two locations, developing DNA for human vaccines at its flagship Hampton facility, with a satellite facility in Canary Wharf, London.
“Our Hampton site has three levels of lab space, with the most secure areas used in accordance with Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) standards. This requires controlled access to and 24/7 monitoring of the clean room areas, including the fridge, freezer, and instrumentation,” explains Goodwin.
Any downtime puts products at risk as we need to be able to monitor our equipment and storage areas 24/7. Any gap in data from something like a freezer requires documentation of a deviation and can result in us having to destroy the material stored there. Any downtime can have massive cost implications and result in delays in delivery to customers.
Live genome sequencing can also run for many hours and needs a reliable network to conduct testing.
“If the network goes down, we can lose all the data,” elaborates Goodwin. “We need to know that the data is getting to the server, as data storage on devices is limited. That’s why up-time is a mission-critical requirement for us.”
The company’s staff also rely on the company network to conduct all of their day-to-day activities and connect and collaborate within their teams.
After experiencing persistent reliability issues with its existing network, Touchlight chose to upgrade its network services when the installed endpoints reached end of life to deliver more resilient connectivity.
After opening its Canary Wharf building, Touchlight also required secure Virtual Private Network (VPN) access to connect the two sites, and wanted greater visibility into wireless infrastructure in the Hampton building.
The solution.
“Before the upgrade, we encountered issues with the Wi-Fi coverage in our main offices. The signal dropped in certain areas, which meant the IT support team constantly got calls about Microsoft Teams not working, and staff could not walk through the building while on a call without the connection dropping.”
Having successfully implemented Touchlight’s Wide Area Network (WAN) and voice services, the company trusted the services provider to recommend the right solution.
We engaged with Connect to find best way forward.
“The team made a solid business case to switch to Juniper Mist as the platform offered additional benefits beyond just improved network uptime,” continues Goodwin.
Juniper Mist is an AI-native networking platform focused on simplifying and automating network operations, enhancing user experiences, and improving IT efficiency. It leverages AI to provide proactive troubleshooting, real-time insights, and automated actions across wired, wireless, WAN, security, and data centre domains.
“The user-friendly portal provided us with the information we needed to ensure uptime and connection quality. The ability to easily surface information about who was struggling with Teams or having connectivity issues greatly simplified IT support, and the solution also provides alerts on infrastructure.”
Touchlight also used the opportunity to move its network support contract to Connect, tying together monitoring of the network backbone and Wi-Fi with one supplier.
Having determined the network configuration and hardware requirements by analysing historical usage patterns, Connect partnered with the in-house Touchlight IT team to roll out the network overhaul.
The implementation was done in one weekend. Every Wi-Fi controller and AP was ripped and replaced across the entire estate, and the Wi-Fi network was consolidated, with service set identifiers (SSIDs) dropping from 10 to four.
The lead Connect technician worked off-site to test that the network was accessible remotely.
“The Connect Engineers worked on-site installing new endpoints throughout the office. They had to follow strict requirements when accessing clean room areas in the lab spaces, because operating in these clean room environments requires suiting up with gloves, hats and boots,” explains Goodwin.
It was the smoothest implementation I have ever seen in terms of its size and scope. In fact, it all happened while I was working remotely.
The implementation went so well that no-one noticed that it had been done when staff returned to work on Monday.
The outcome.
“The Wi-Fi signal was stronger, and all the dead spots were gone due to the improved coverage. All of our Wi-Fi dead spots now had a strong wireless connection to the network,” adds Goodwin.
The Juniper solution hands people across to apps seamlessly, which means staff can roam freely throughout the office without dropping connectivity, making their lives more convenient, efficient and a lot easier.
“I can’t remember the last time someone said a Teams call dropped while walking across the site,” affirms Goodwin.
Touchlight Genetics also implemented a guest portal to create a more secure network that accommodated visitors.
“The ability to approve and assign guest logins has significantly improved security, which is an important consideration for our company. We know that guest access is automatically removed from the system after a few days.”
The ability to track visitors and staff via location services adds another layer of security, ensuring Touchlight can monitor that they only access areas they are permitted to.
These efficiencies, improved reliability and automated tasks means the internal IT support services team is now also more productive, with more time to focus on proactive measures to improve mission-critical services in the company.
Since going live, there has been at least a 75% drop in reported incidents to the IT service desk.
“The team can easily tap into the Juniper system via a portal via their phone and see what is going on. We can also tune into far more data to see what’s happening, while Connect manages the proactive off-site monitoring to maintain Quality of Service," continues Goodwin.
The next phase of Touchlight’s network transformation will include replacing physical network infrastructure in 2027, as the current solution also reaches the end of life.
“We have built up this basic infrastructure over the last 10 years and will rip and replace it with Juniper,” confirms Goodwin.
Taking a piecemeal approach to network modernisation means Touchlight can deploy its capital expenditure over a longer period, which makes financial sense.
“Bluetooth technology also interests us. Implementing these capabilities will future-proof the operation as we can track people should we move to 24/7 manufacturing with more accurate location services and door access for a better overall user experience when working on-site,” concludes Goodwin.
Improved
network uptime.
Decreased
internal IT inefficiencies.
Increased
trust with secure networks.
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