IBM and Amazon Web Services unite behind oil & gas energy transition

IBM and Amazon Web Services will work together to combine the benefits of IBM Open Data for Industries for IBM Cloud Pak for Data and the AWS Cloud to serve energy customers.

Data, digital technologies and innovation can help energy companies decarbonise by increasing efficiencies, however, IBM found in a recent survey that less than half of oil and gas executive respondents are using data to drive that innovation.

This is in part, according to IBM, because most of the digitization efforts have been in proprietary closed systems, hindering the potential to combine and maximize the value of data.

The collaboration between IBM and AWS aims to accelerate the reduction of data barriers in the industry.

IBM Open Data for Industries is an open-source solution using the OSDU data foundation for the oil, gas and energy industry.

IBM Open Data for Industries is fully integrated with IBM Cloud Pak for Data for easy data management, and built on Red Hat OpenShift, a Kubernetes platform and open architecture, designed so that companies can run and operate applications universally.

With this collaboration, customers will gain the flexibility to run OSDU Data Platform applications in the AWS cloud or on-premises while addressing data residency requirements.

Combined with the expansive cloud infrastructure of AWS cloud services, this data platform can help energy companies reduce the cost, time and resources needed to leverage the data to derive insight, streamlining operations and transition to sustainable energy generation, states IBM.

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“Much of the data needed to solve the complex energy challenges, such as superior subsurface decisions, already exists, yet is untapped. This is because one of the greatest values of that data is derived when it can be effectively combined, but usually this data is locked by data residency requirements, legacy applications or proprietary data formats,” said Bill Vass, vice president, engineering, AWS.

“By collaborating with IBM and leveraging Red Hat OpenShift, we will be able to offer customers a global, seamless offering with the flexibility to run on virtually any IT infrastructure and drive longer-term digital innovation.”

The OSDU Forum is a cross-industry collaboration that provides a vendor-neutral framework for companies to develop data platforms against common energy industry standards. By working together, IBM and AWS will accelerate the value of this platform for global customers. The goal is that this combined effort will help serve the needs of energy companies today with flexibility to adapt to change amid energy transition.

“Data is a critical asset to help fuel energy transition, yet too often energy companies must choose between running applications on-premises or in the cloud, and often each deployment uses a proprietary data format,” said Manish Chawla, global managing director, energy, resources and manufacturing, IBM.

“This means that rather than using all of that collective data to gather insights, augment operations and inform innovation, some of it was going unused. Our collaboration with Amazon Web Services is addressing the need to make it easier for energy customers to access their data and provides the industry with a flexible solution to meet the challenges of today, as well as more easily adapt as the industry evolves.”