By Harald Sundalskleiv

Companies in the oil and gas industry use hundreds of applications and vast amounts of data as part of ever more advanced workflows and new ways of working. Integrating the number of application and data without “breaking the workflow” has always been a challenge for many organizations and require a multi-skilled workforce. Several benefits can be derived from a cloud solution, and controlling apps means controlling costs.

The workflow and workloads of petrotechnical projects, and the structure of the businesses involved, leave the different actors with a vast number of apps required for everyday operation. Geology, geophysics, reservoir engineering, drilling, and production cover a plethora of tasks for the companies involved in all phases of E&P. Consequently, the digital tools necessary to get the job done are numerous.

A couple of big players dominate the market with their apps and associated cloud solutions, and for many, these are the backbone of their digital toolbox. Many other companies of various sizes have developed specialized tools to fill the gaps in the large systems, often using the same data sets, which is why the total adds up considerably.

When a company is bound to use, say, hundreds of apps in different stages of their value chain, quite a few challenges arise.

Firstly, I would like to address the administration of the apps. Whenever someone in the organization wants to include a new app in the toolbox, a chain of tasks follows, and someone needs to complete them:

• Procurement
• Approval
• Installing
• Security measures
• Compatibility check
• Accessibility

Secondly, there’s the operational stage:

• Keeping up with new versions
• Handling compatibility issues with other apps as new releases occur
• Knowing how security patches are connected to different servers
• Managing and controlling licensing for individuals

For a company with localities in various places around the world, new challenges arise:

• Apps installed locally are out of reach for the rest of the workforce
• Operators need to be on-premise to fulfill specific tasks
• Rendering of big sessions are time-consuming locally and require bandwidth when transferring
• Multi-site licensing

Joining forces

The scenarios described are well known to many companies in our business. Very few have the in-house capability to solve them. Hence IT departments face a load of extra work they were not hired to do.

Addressing these challenges requires two competencies:

• High-level IT-development and architecture competence. Many companies don’t have that because they don’t need it for their core processes.
• In-depth knowledge of the geotechnical domain and hands-on experience from the field

At Cegal, we have joined those two forces through 20 years, enabling us to develop a genuine vendor-agnostic cloud solution.

Vendor agnostic integration of apps

Given the safeguarding and the competition between the leading software players, you need a vendor-agnostic integrator to make all apps work together seamlessly. GeoCloud provides you a Workplace as a Service with a single sign-in to all your apps. At present, Cegal has unique expertise on more than 350 apps for the petrotechnical domain. We host and support them for our customers through GeoCloud as a full-service model and part of your existing back-office services, with any provider you are using, externally, or internally.

Access from anywhere

GeoCloud is a solution for resource-intensive workloads. Typically, petrotechnical environments are packed with high-end workstations that consume significant amounts of energy, generate considerable noise pollution, and limit user accessibility. The key for any organization is to reduce the Co2 emission, GeoCloud supports you on that journey supporting those objectives.

GeoCloud can be deliveredas private, public, or hybrid cloud. The processor power and cloud computing ability of these providers unties apps from the specialized hardware. The user may work from anywhere with standard company laptops, cell phones, tablets, or any other device, and collaborate across borders, countries, and continents.

The cloud offers enterprises a means of securing business continuity when locations in conflict areas must shut down, or evacuation plans take effect, like in the current Covid-19 pandemic.

Control apps and costs

With numerous apps installed on local workstations around the globe, it’s almost impossible to keep control over usage, versions, licensing, and patches. Add to the mix a constant focus on securing your most important data and assets, and you get the picture of IT-departments facing extreme challenges.

What we provide with GeoCloud is a means to control all these parameters from a central hub.

Clients have to assess their collection of apps and shortlist the critical ones for implementation to the cloud. From there, it’s easy to control access and grant permissions to install new ones. If you have 40 users one month and 30 users the next, you will be charged accordingly per user, as we sell Geocloud as a service. GeOCloud and IaaS costs become manageable and fully predictive.

GeoCloud offers balanced cost control and long-term savings with accelerated progress towards technology-driven asset operation and business strategies.

Starting the digitalization journey

GeoCloud enables organizations to tear down information silos by bringing together data from all applications, tools, and platforms in one centralized cloud solution – regardless of vendor and partner. It’s also a “digitalization hub,” and several companies rely on GeoCloud to start their digitalization journey and lay a foundation for future sustainability.

The solution consolidates critical data across business functions, enabling new technology, tools, and solutions that can drive organizational benefits, optimize costs, and securing your most important data and assets.

Harald Sundalskleiv, Chief Commercial Officer, Cegal

Harald Sundalskleiv has more than 35 years of experience working with technology in oil and gas. With a background in data & project management, IT and network computing, Harald has held several sales management positions in Schlumberger. Harald currently holds the role as Chief Commercial Officer in Cegal, taking advantage of his extensive experience on technology drivers and digital megatrends. 

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