Chevron teams up with Microsoft to drive advanced technologies
Chevron has announced a seven-year partnership with Microsoft, establishing the IT giant as Chevron’s primary cloud provider. The new collaboration will accelerate the application of advanced technologies including analytics and the Internet of Things (IoT) ‘to drive performance and improve efficiencies’.
"We embrace every opportunity that streamlines our workflows, gives us insights into more efficient operations and helps us compete," said Joe Geagea, Chevron’s executive vice president of Technology, Projects and Services. "We already have a head start in digitising our oilfields, but we want to accelerate our deployment of new technologies that position us to increase our revenues, lower our costs, and improve the safety and reliability of our operations."
The strategic partnership with Microsoft is part of Chevron’s ‘overall digitisation initiative’. This initiative aims to streamline the company’s IT operations around a digital core connecting the company’s engineers and operations through analytics and increased automation. According to a statement from Chevron, adoption of Microsoft’s Azure platform will allow Chevron’s IT workforce to evolve from supporting infrastructure to enabling more advanced technologies, as well as optimising exploration, reservoir management, production operations, midstream logistics and marketing operations.
"Chevron has a long history of applying advanced technologies to develop the energy that improves lives and powers the world. We also understand scale, and the cloud at hyper-scale is something we intend to leverage for agility and efficiency. Through this strategic partnership, we believe Chevron will have a competitive advantage," said Bill Braun, Chief Information Officer.
"The volumes and velocity of real time data we obtain from the reservoir through refineries to the retail pump grows at a dramatic pace every year. Our Microsoft relationship will advance our high-performance computing, IoT, and help capitalise on innovation in data science and machine learning."
Microsoft and Chevron’s strategic partnership also extends to broader technical collaboration which will see both companies focus on joint innovation from a technology and business process perspective. This will include identifying areas to influence Microsoft’s roadmap of future products and where Microsoft solutions can help solve Chevron’s business challenges.
