The biopharmaceutical industry faces challenges in time-to-market, complexity, and scalability due to rigid traditional automation architectures. Industrial Control as a Service (ICaaS) offers a flexible, server-based alternative, virtualizing control functions to enhance the modularity and the pre-qualification of automation systems. Using the Design Research Methodology, this study investigates the impact of ICaaS on the biopharmaceutical industry, demonstrating a reduced time-to-market, an improved top-line growth and an overall reduced investment risk. ICaaS modernizes biopharmaceutical automation by enabling the usage of pre-qualified software modules and by lowering the effort required to deploy advanced technologies like AI or model predictive control. Additionally, it reduces investment risk by shifting CAPEX costs to OPEX costs. Nevertheless, future research should explore the standardization and the business models of ICaaS in more detail to allow for a broader adoption of this approach.