Schlumberger, IBM and Red Hat Announce Major Hybrid Cloud Collaboration for the Energy Industry

Schlumberger, IBM and Red Hat, announced today a major collaboration to accelerate digital transformation across the oil and gas industry. The joint initiative will provide global access to Schlumberger’s leading exploration and production (E&P) cloud-based environment and cognitive applications by leveraging IBM’s hybrid cloud technology, built on the Red Hat OpenShift container platform.

Collaborative development will initially focus on two key areas:

• Private, hybrid or multi-cloud deployment of the DELFI* cognitive E&P environment enabled by Red Hat OpenShift to significantly expand access for customers.
• Delivering the first hybrid cloud implementation of the OSDU™ data platform (the open data platform for the industry).

Through the agreement with IBM and Red Hat Schlumberger has committed to the exclusive use of Red Hat OpenShift. Using the container platform will enable the deployment of applications in the DELFI environment across any infrastructure, from traditional data centers to multiple clouds, including private and public. This new way of hosting will offer the possibility to use multiple cloud providers and will address critical issues for customers, facilitating in-country deployments in compliance with local regulations and data residency requirements. 

The DELFI environment incorporates cutting-edge data analytics and artificial intelligence, drawing upon multiple data sources, automating workflows, and facilitating seamless collaboration for domain teams. Many more oil and gas operators, suppliers and partners, from all regions of the world will be enabled to work from the industry’s leading digital environment—built on a standard, open platform—where they can ‘write once and run everywhere’ when creating new applications.

“By expanding market access to the DELFI environment we take a major step forward on the journey to establishing the open and flexible digital environment our industry needs,” comments Olivier Le Peuch, chief executive officer, Schlumberger. “Our collaboration with IBM and Red Hat complements our established digital partnerships to produce an industry-first solution to overcome our customers’ challenges. Together, we are enabling seamless access to a hybrid cloud platform in all countries across the globe for deployment in any basin, for any operator.”

“The logic, purpose, and differentiation of all businesses can now be rendered in code, which is why digital innovation has become the most powerful way to drive transformation and hybrid cloud is the lever that unleashes it,” said Arvind Krishna, chief executive officer, IBM. “Together with Schlumberger, we are empowering a much broader group of participants to play a role in driving that transformation and helping the energy industry solve some of the world’s toughest challenges to emerge stronger.”

"The energy industry is transforming as organizations look for efficient new ways to power their operations, adopt digital technologies to create a competitive advantage, and innovate and integrate workflows to make faster and better decisions,” said Paul Cormier, president and chief executive officer, Red Hat. “A hybrid cloud foundation built on open source offers the flexibility, acceleration and innovation this digital transformation requires. Schlumberger has long been an industry leader and is bold in its vision for digital transformation in the energy industry. We look forward to working closely with Schlumberger to make the DELFI environment available everywhere with Red Hat OpenShift."

Schlumberger supports many of the world’s most vital oil and gas operations and is on the forefront of digitalization across the energy sector. It has established the DELFI environment as the industry-leading cognitive E&P environment where today energy professionals access open APIs to work together, independent of role, workflow or physical location, and create solutions that significantly improve business operations.

The organizations intend to further their collaboration with the creation of a differentiated data management and operations solution for the OSDU™ data platform, enabling oil and gas operators to build, deploy and transition digital solutions with hybrid-cloud data infrastructures. This will foster wider collaboration and greater efficiency across many professionals in the E&P value chain.

Prior to this announcement, Schlumberger, IBM and Red Hat successfully piloted the new hybrid cloud deployment of the DELFI environment on Red Hat OpenShift, the leading Kubernetes platform, working with Red Hat and IBM Services, the world’s largest team of Red Hat certified consultants. The two organizations focused on demonstrating the flexibility and portability for compute, storage and data intensive exploration and field development applications.

IBM’s collaboration with Schlumberger is part of the company’s new commitment to invest in accelerating adoption of hybrid cloud and open architectures. IBM is targeting essential industries, such as energy, running the crucial processes of the world. These efforts are increasing in importance as organizations navigate the impacts of the pandemic and economic downturn, which is creating an acute need for speed to market, flexibility and nimbleness to encourage innovation.