Enhancing Scalability and Reliability through Cloud for a Global Energy Leader

Client Background

Client:  A major vertically integrated oil and gas company
Industry: Energy
Products/Services: Exploration and production, refining, distribution and marketing, power generation, and trading; also active in renewable energy businesses including biofuels, wind power, smart grid, and solar.
Area of Operation: Global (based in the United Kingdom)

Situation

A leading UK-based oil and gas enterprise relied on the OSIsoft PI data management system, a market-leading data platform for industrial operations, and accessed it through an on-premises data warehouse. The relentless increase in data volumes meant continually purchasing new hardware, which added to the IT department’s maintenance challenge. The company wanted to move the system to the cloud to reduce the costs of maintaining and operating its data-related infrastructure. It was essential that the cloud transformation occur with zero downtime; the data management system is critical to day-to-day business operations. When the company discovered that there were few off-the-shelf solutions for moving OSIsoft PI to the cloud, it engaged Wipro to architect and manage the transition.

Collaboration

Wipro helped the company migrate its on-premises data center to Azure and AWS cloud solutions. The effort began with proof-of-concept project to extract data from source systems and move them to the cloud PI ecosystem. An important aspect of the effort was leveraging the company’s enterprise agreement with OSIsoft PI to build a robust PI ecosystem; Wipro helped the company upgrade its PI components to enable end-to-end data flow from source systems to the cloud. The engagement included integrating interfaces and business critical applications; the Azure cloud standardized connectivity and replaced high maintenance, code-based custom connectivity the company has historically used.

All told, Wipro managed the connectivity challenges and migrated more than 40 business applications using a rigorous automation process (using transfer tools and scripts) to get the work done fast. The project also involved a redundant set-up to ensure no applications were down or unavailable during the cloud transition. The engagement also led to more robust application security thanks to the adoption of Windows Integrated Security (which is recommended by OSIsoft). An Agile methodology also accelerated the migration process.

Outcomes

Over the course of four weeks, Wipro migrated 20 years of archive data – some 60 terabytes – plus interfaces and applications to the cloud without impacting the business. The resulting architecture generates multiple benefits: With the Azure cloud infrastructure, the oil and gas company has 100% availability and can easily scale going forward. The simplified cloud architecture also eliminated many security risks and firewall challenges. Also, the company has realized a significant reduction in operating and infrastructure maintenance expenses. 

In addition, the move to the cloud improves performance (reduces latency) and availability to enable the delivery of a better user experience.