CDW Provides Technology Pipeline To Global Oil/Gas Services Companies

Vernon Hills, IL - It can be a daunting enough challenge to operate information technology (IT) systems reliably in extreme climates and widely diverse geographies, but today's highly networked oil and gas industry also demands new levels of IT security and client confidentiality – even as competitive pressures call for aggressive cost management. CDW Corporation, a leading provider of technology products and services to business, recently released two customer stories that demonstrate how its technology specialists and customer support can help oil and gas services companies connect their worldwide operations to capture business efficiencies and opportunities through innovative data centers, networks and purchasing processes.

"The oil and gas industry is as reliant now upon highly sophisticated information technology and microchips as it is upon powerful, large-scale equipment and transportation," said Bill Weaver, CDW group vice president, commercial business. "CDW's account managers and technology specialist teams excel at helping oil and gas services IT managers select and implement integrated systems that support field operations and high-level, high-speed decision making."

Frontier Drilling Rigs an Unsinkable Network

Frontier Drilling, headquartered in Norway with administrative offices in Houston, Texas, operates and manages conventional drillships, semi-submersibles and "floating production, storage, offloading" (FPSO) vessels. The rapidly growing company operates these ‘cities on water' in locations including Norway, Brazil, Nigeria, Singapore, Indonesia, the Gulf of Mexico, Alaska and Canada's Northwest Territories. Before 2006, each vessel's IT and communications infrastructure was designed and built ad hoc, with all information and inventory flowing, hub-like, through the on-shore headquarters. Of necessity, shipboard servers, computers and other devices were locally managed and had only limited connections to onshore technical support. Beginning in 2006, led by newly hired IT Director Kurk Moore, Frontier Drilling's IT team worked with technology specialist teams from CDW to change all of that.

"Consistency of equipment and software standards enable better technical support," says Moore. "Plus, with better-networked systems, we could improve problem tracking and knowledge transfer across all of our vessels, systems and support personnel."

Frontier's IT team has updated the company's entire information infrastructure, with support from CDW through their dedicated account manager and technology specialists in LAN/WAN networking, telephony, power/cooling, servers, storage and software licensing. All Frontier vessels now run on standardized hardware platforms and software configurations, networked via secure VSAT Systems broadband satellite Internet service. Communications from each rig flow not only to the onshore data center and management facilities, but also between all of the company's vessels, supporting improved communication and management of issues from materials inventory to operations and health/safety management.

"The connectivity of our ships and onshore systems is very important to our management team," says Moore. "Now, through our updated systems and the VSAT solution, our executives and our clients can see operations data in real time. We have eliminated the latency we once had to work around, yet our partitioning and security systems ensure that data is held confidential and accessible only to the appropriate client on each rig."

Shipboard systems, all acquired through CDW, include Cisco Catalyst switches, HP DL380 G5 high-performance servers running Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and Juniper NetScreen Services Gateways. Desktops and laptops are from HP, sourced through CDW because of their ability to image and ship with a sense of urgency – often overnight.

Frontier's onshore data center technology features VMWare-based virtual servers running across HP Blade 25 Series servers, with Cisco wireless and networking solutions, Citrix access gateways and protected by Juniper NetScreen.

"CDW's network architects and speed of deployment were key in our migration to the virtualized blade/SAN architecture, especially in deploying systems aboard our vessels under very tight refurbishing or construction project paths," Moore concludes. "CDW has seen all of these challenges before, and they have provided valuable advice as to what would work."

Intertek OCA (Caleb Brett) Gains Global Leverage with Local Service

Intertek Oil Chemical & Agri Division (Caleb Brett) is a leading international service provider for laboratory and inspection-related services, including the analysis and certification of crude oil and refined products in the petroleum industry. The firm operates laboratories at more than 400 locations in over 100 countries, and its IT applications support business and laboratory systems from office automation to human resource management, and tracking and reporting of test results. At one time, each branch location in the sprawling, global network managed its IT systems autonomously, until new IT leadership at Intertek Group pursued the opportunity for improved economies from standardization and centralized contracts – not only in the purchase of equipment but even more so in the less direct costs of ongoing support.

"Intertek Group's corporate IT leadership worked hard to establish global standards over the years," says Larry Eribarne, Houston-based global desktop manager for Intertek OCA. "Implementing those standards globally within OCA, without creating a purchasing nightmare, was quite challenging. We had a very lean IT staff, and we needed a partner to help us work out the details."

Eribarne and his team partnered with CDW to procure HP desktop systems and laptops running Microsoft Windows XP and Microsoft Office, which had been the standard for years but were previously purchased locally by the company's regional offices. They then centralized purchasing of other volume items such as memory, computer cases and other accessories. The next challenge was enabling order and delivery to locations around the world under the centralized contracts, from Bahrain to Bolivia, and from South Africa to the North Slope of Alaska.

The CDW account team dedicated to Intertek OCA presented an intranet solution with a hosted application that would present remote users standardized hardware/software bundles and embedded approval mechanisms that both eased ordering and enforced the companywide standards. CDW also enabled Intertek OCA's U.S. operations to connect from their intranet solution into GlobalServe, a purchasing portal that ties into global contracts from participating vendors and provides local procurement based on global pricing.

"CDW has helped us obtain clear visibility into our global IT environment," Eribarne says. "Visibility equals control, and control enables improvement in procurement as well as in remote support. Their solutions and support have facilitated a very lean but effective and robust IT operation."

"Our purchasing intranet and asset tagging solutions help customers like Frontier Drilling and Intertek OCA capture the details of what their remote locations are buying, where it is being shipped and what it costs," concludes CDW's Weaver. "That enables them to manage their systems and costs effectively, even in the most complicated logistical arrangements."

SOURCE: CDW