Work that stays owned from first question to lasting use.

From six cloud-first employees to a 60-person laboratory.

A venture-backed gene-therapy company began with six employees, a mostly cloud-based environment, and a strong preference for speed. Its technical needs did not always fit standard MSP offerings, which were often too rigid or too expensive for the immediate problem.

Merkle & Bloom became the company’s embedded senior technical resource. Working with the client stakeholder who owned priorities and budget, Aaron designed and implemented practical solutions that fit the company’s actual needs instead of forcing them into a standard MSP playbook.

As the company grew to 60 employees and expanded into a new laboratory, Aaron designed, deployed, and supported its network, hypervisors, virtual machines, SAN, VPN, and approximately 40 TB of fast onsite scientific-data storage. Scientific teams could request new virtual machines, applications, and services for custom software and receive them quickly, without creating duplicated infrastructure or recurring per-VM costs.

Aaron also reviewed proposed ELN, cloud, and user-facing systems; coordinated with instrument vendors when specialized equipment failed; and remained available remotely, after hours, and onsite when necessary.

The environment was intentionally simple, resilient, and supported by automated reporting. Infrastructure outages were nearly nonexistent, while backups and configuration history allowed accidental changes to be restored quickly.

“We tried several local MSPs and spent thousands only to have them install their own software that got in the way more often than helped. When we did contact support it was at least a day before any response. Aaron just gets things done. It always works. He never seems to care about what is cool or fancy, but just what works. Exactly what we needed!”

Client stakeholder, anonymized

From thumb drives to a cohesive multi-site governed lab-data platform.

The immediate problem sounded straightforward: scientists needed a better way to move and store laboratory data. In reality, the company’s laboratory networks were isolated from its corporate environment, leaving thumb drives as the only practical way to transfer data. No approved alternative existed, and the company had never established rules for managing this data centrally.

Aaron led the development and deployment of the company’s first governed laboratory data platform, coordinating the initiative across Legal, QA, Records and Information Management, scientific, technical, and business teams—from initial requirements through deployment and adoption.

With no existing company baseline to follow, Aaron led an extensive series of working sessions to define what data could be stored, what constituted an official record, how long different data should be retained, and how information should move from early research into manufacturing and GxP-controlled processes. The resulting technical and governance model met the combined requirements of every participating group while remaining practical for scientists to use.

Aaron and his team then conducted more than 50 individual interviews with scientists across three North American sites. These were detailed working sessions covering how each group created, organized, used, and retained its data. The goal was not simply to impose a new storage structure, but to understand the scientists’ work well enough to build something they would trust and use correctly.

The new platform was deployed across the company’s segmented laboratory and corporate environments. Every laboratory computer and connected instrument was handled individually. Integrations were scheduled to minimize disruption, existing data was migrated, and systems—including equipment with specialized interfaces—were configured and documented. Scientific subject-matter experts received system-specific documentation for future support.

Aaron’s team also created the onboarding materials and developed and delivered the in-person training.

After deployment, Aaron worked with business leaders to establish Data Governance Teams and monthly reviews. These created a practical balance between scientists’ desire to preserve potentially valuable research data and Legal’s requirement to avoid indefinite, unmanaged retention.

The project required groups with very different priorities to resolve requirements the company had never addressed before. Aaron created a common framework for working through those questions, brought the teams together around a practical solution, built global support before launch, and enabled immediate adoption across the participating sites.

The project was completed early and under budget. The platform became the standard data repository for the company’s laboratories.