IBM and the oil industry services giant Schlumberger have partnered on a major initiative involving the trendy technology of hybrid cloud computing.
The two companies unveiled the partnership on Tuesday, highlighting the role of IBM’s Red Hat company in providing the underlying technology that helps clients build and run applications that operate in internal data centers and computing data centers in the third-party cloud more easily.
IBM and Schlumberger declined to comment on the financial details of the deal.
Schlumberger CEO Olivier Le Peuch explained that the partnership would result in technology that embodies the oil industry’s ongoing digital transformation. Although the oil industry has traditionally relied on heavy equipment, such as deep-hole drilling machines, these devices were generally not connected to the Internet or configured to work with more advanced analytical systems.
In theory, connecting oil rigs to the web and cloud data centers allows engineers to aggregate data across their entire fleet of devices, which can help companies more accurately track the performance of individual devices or improve performance. operations. specific such as perforation. This so-called industrial IOT (or Internet of Things) idea is becoming increasingly popular in industries such as energy and manufacturing.
But it is difficult for companies to connect their machinery to both their internal data centers and their cloud computing services without a lot of work. That’s why companies are increasingly using a type of data center technology, called container technology, that allows developers to build applications that can run in multiple data centers, both internal and in the cloud.
IBM and Schlumberger began talking about an ambitious container project about a year ago and have spent the past six months working on a proof-of-concept system for oil companies to use. Le Peuch described the new technology as helping geophysicists collect seismic data, which can be stored in a company’s internal data center, for example, and then use different machine learning tools in the cloud to analyze that information with the in order to perform a more accurate analysis. analysis. exploration of the well. “
Schlumberger has previously partnered with cloud computing companies such as Google and Microsoft to help power some of the machine learning services it offers to its customers. The new technology created with IBM would presumably help Schlumberger clients continue to use those cloud data analytics services without having to move their data to third-party cloud data centers.
The idea of hybrid or multi-cloud computing has become more popular with businesses that may be concerned with storing all of their data with a single cloud computing service, a notion that is referenced in the world of computing. computing. computing. technology as a supplier dependency. Additionally, Le Peuch said that the new hybrid cloud technology would be useful for oil companies that must comply with government regulations that limit where they can store their data.
“That is a game changer for us; it’s a game changer for our industry, ”said Le Peuch.
An IBM spokesman said the companies have not disclosed pricing details and that the new services “will be offered by region in the coming months.”
