Microsoft Customer Solution
Manufacturing Industry Case Study
Energy Company Enhances Technical
Computing to Improve Upstream Operations
Overview
Country or Region: United States
Industry: Oil and gas
Customer Profile
Headquartered in Houston, Texas,
Apache Corporation is an energy
company that explores for, develops,
and produces natural gas, crude oil,
and natural gas liquids. It employs
approximately 4,000 people.
Business Situation
Apache wanted to increase geophysicist
productivity and decision-making ability
by deploying the most up-to-date
seismic modeling software in a 64-bit
computing environment.
Solution
Instead of standardizing on UNIX,
Apache deployed the 64-bit version of
the Windows operating system to run the
geoscientists’ preferred applications in a
technical computing environment.
Benefits
 Improved application performance by
50 percent
 Increased amount of data generated
and used by 700 percent
 Better collaboration
“Shifting to the Windows 64-bit environment
generated huge productivity gains for our
geoscientists, helping Apache build a competitive
advantage in all areas of our upstream operations.”
Bradley Lauritsen, Manager of Exploration Computing, Apache Corporation
Apache Corporation, a global oil and gas exploration and
production company based in Houston, Texas, ran its seismic
interpretation and reservoir modeling applications on a 32-bit
operating system, and its geoscientists were running into data
size limitations. To better handle the large amount of data
needed for making optimal drilling and production decisions,
Apache deployed the 64-bit version of the Windows desktop
operating system and the new 64-bit version of the Petrel® 2009
seismic-to-simulation software preferred by its geoscientists.
Now, the company’s workstations can handle more data—700
percent more since the software deployment—to improve
reservoir modeling and seismic interpretation accuracy. In
addition, after Apache deployed a storage solution from NetApp
that uses the latest Microsoft file-sharing protocol, application
performance improved by a dramatic 50 percent.
“Geophysicists and
reservoir engineers had
to break up their
modeling data into
chunks, which slowed
them down and reduced
their ability to assess the
entire underground
reserves in a single
region.”
Bradley Lauritsen,
Manager of Exploration Computing,
Apache Corporation
Situation
Apache Corporation was formed in 1954
with U.S.$250,000 of investor capital and
the goal of becoming a significant and
profitable oil company. Today, Apache has
exploration and production operations in
six countries, which are divided into producing regions: the Gulf Coast and Central
regions of the United States, and regions in
Canada, Egypt, the North Sea, Australia,
and Argentina. The company has achieved
sustainable, lower-risk, repeatable drilling
opportunities in its semi-autonomous
producing regions, which enables it to
pursue higher-risk, higher-reward
exploration elsewhere.
To satisfy a growing global demand for
energy, oil and gas companies must
allocate ever more resources to their
upstream operations. Also known as
exploration and production (E&P), these
operations include searching for underground or underwater oil and gas fields,
drilling exploratory wells, and operating the
wells that bring crude oil or raw natural gas
to the surface.
In the E&P world, success is directly attributable to the expertise of geoscientists and
the tools they use to analyze large volumes
of seismic and simulation data. With more
available information, these geoscientists
can improve their reservoir modeling and
seismic interpretations to make drilling and
production decisions that maximize profitability while minimizing financial risk.
Therefore, the more data and expertise that
Apache geoscientists can share with each
other, the more the company benefits from
the free flow of ideas that foster innovation
and technical advances.
To remain competitive long term, Apache
needed to align itself with technology
partners that could deliver sustainable
innovation in technical computing and
intuitive collaboration technologies that
would benefit the entire worldwide
organization.
Performance and Reliability Issues
Until recently, Apache had been conducting
its seismic interpretations and well log
analysis using seismic analysis and
petrophysical applications that ran on the
32-bit version of the Windows operating
system. In addition, Apache had a few
workstations running other applications on
different versions of the UNIX and Linux
operating systems. As a result, many
engineers coped with what amounted to a
dual platform on their workstations.
This scenario caused performance, reliability, and interoperability issues for Apache
geoscientists. The ideal scenario for the
engineers would be to have a single platform that combined the richness and ease
of use of the Windows platform with the
large data capabilities of the UNIX/Linux
platform. Unfortunately, a 32-bit Windows
workstation cannot handle seismic data
files that are terabytes in size without
significant performance degradation.
Engineers often waited 20 minutes to load
their data. Hampered by a platform that
offered limited amounts of random access
memory (RAM), the engineers could analyze only small geographic areas at a time.
“Geophysicists and reservoir engineers had
to break up their modeling data into
chunks, which slowed them down and
reduced their ability to assess the entire
underground reserves in a single region,”
says Bradley Lauritsen, Manager of Exploration Computing at Apache Corporation.
Poor Global Collaboration
Geoscientists who used the UNIX and Linux
workstations found themselves somewhat
isolated from their peers. “Engineers like to
brainstorm and share ideas; however, run-
"It didn’t take long for us
to see that with Petrel
2009 running on the 64bit version of the
Windows operating
system we gain a more
productive experience
for our engineers."
Bradley Lauritsen,
Manager of Exploration Computing,
Apache Corporation
ning two platforms caused collaboration
issues among the geoscientists,” says
Lauritsen. “We have groups all over the
world that want to share their data, but
they encountered problems when exchanging PowerPoint slides, e-mail, and Excel
spreadsheets between the different
platforms.”
These problems were thrown into the spotlight when Apache geoscientists heard that
Schlumberger, a well-known oil field
services provider, was about to release a
new version of its E&P software. Called
Petrel® 2009, this application is built to run
on the 64-bit version of the Windows
desktop operating system. Engineers were
excited to take advantage of this unified
seismic interpretation and reservoir modeling application.
“The technology that Schlumberger had to
offer had so many advantages,” says
Lauritsen. “Our geoscientists were eager to
use the more efficient algorithms and the
new workflows for gaining different perspectives on their data to improve decision
making. They also recognized that the
software offered superior risk analysis
techniques.”
So, Lauritsen and other members of the
Exploration Technology Group at Apache
began to think about how to acquire this
new technology for its geoscientists. The
group faced a decision: either upgrade the
workstations running the Windows operating system to the 64-bit version, or
migrate entirely to the UNIX platform.
“Deciding on the platform was the main
concern, but there were other considerations,” says Lauritsen. “We thought about
collaboration issues and compatibility with
our Microsoft environment. We thought
about increased network and data storage
requirements. In the end, the decision came
down to finding the best technology
vendor with a strong partner network that
would give us a cost-effective foundation
for moving into the world of technical
computing.”
Solution
Instead of standardizing on a UNIX
platform, Apache chose to standardize on
the more accessible and cost-effective
Windows operating system. The fact that
many oil and gas application vendors are
partnering with Microsoft to deliver new
technical computing E&P solutions was a
clear factor as well.
“It didn’t take long for us to see that with
Petrel 2009 running on the 64-bit version
of the Windows operating system we gain
a more productive experience for our
engineers and an operating system that
integrates better with our overall IT
environment,” says Lauritsen.
Migrating to a 64-Bit Environment
Apache began migrating to the 64-bit
version of Windows in October 2008. The
main differences between the 32-bit and
64-bit versions of Windows are memory
accessibility and memory management.
One of the greatest advantages of using
the 64-bit version is the operating system’s
ability to access more than 128 gigabytes
of RAM to enable technical computing in a
Windows desktop environment.
The engineers in Cairo, Egypt, were so
eager to take advantage of the performance enhancements that come with 64-bit
computing that they deployed the 64-bit
version of the Windows desktop operating
system and the beta version of Petrel 2009
in a pilot program in October 2008. “Cairo
has a large amount of seismic data and is a
very active region, making it a perfect
venue for testing Petrel 2009,” says
Lauritsen. “So, Apache became the first
upstream oil and gas company to use
Petrel software running on the 64-bit
version of the Windows operating system
in a production environment.”
The pilot was a huge success, and as soon
as the official release of Petrel 2009
became available in January 2009, Apache
deployed it at the company’s Aberdeen,
Scotland, office. By the end of February,
Apache had migrated 530 workstations
around the world to Petrel 2009 and other
petrophysics software running on the 64bit version of the Windows desktop
operating system.
To improve collaboration among geoscientists, Apache used Microsoft Office
SharePoint Server 2007. Lauritsen and his
team built a link on the company’s intranet
home page to a portal where geoscientists
can share E&P data using Microsoft Office
Enterprise 2007 desktop productivity programs. The portal is available to anyone in
the company and is supported by Microsoft
SQL Server 2008 database management
software that stores more than one terabyte of data.
Generating Volumes of Data
With the introduction of technical computing at Apache, geoscientists began to
manipulate large seismic volumes and
multimillion-cell models to perform volume
analysis on different regions. This led to a
700 percent increase in the amount of data
being generated—and a corresponding
increase in the demand for storage—which
Apache was able to meet with a storage
solution from Microsoft Gold Certified
Partner NetApp.
“We’ve been using NetApp® storage
solutions for more than six years,” says
Lauritsen. “Luckily for Apache, NetApp had
recently collaborated with Microsoft and
Schlumberger to develop best practice
guidelines for taking optimal advantage of
Petrel software and Windows operating
system capabilities such as the latest
Microsoft Server Message Block [SMB] filesharing protocol, called SMB 2.”
SMB 2 improves on prior versions of the
SMB protocol by supporting large buffer
sizes and by compounding multiple networking transactions into fewer data
requests. This latter capability reduces the
amount of traffic between the workstation
and server to improve input/output bandwidth and application performance. NetApp became the first vendor to deliver a
data storage and management solution
that supports SMB 2. Apache deployed this
solution at its Houston, Texas, office on
approximately 200 workstations running
Petrel 2009 and connected by a 10-gigabit
Ethernet network on the back end. The
company plans to deploy the NetApp
storage solution globally in 2010.
“The new data management and storage
solution from NetApp provided the missing
link for Apache geoscientists to take full
advantage of Petrel 2009 technical computing on the desktop using the 64-bit version
of the Windows operating system,” says
Lauritsen.
Apache also upgraded approximately 10
percent of its workstations to the 64-bit
version of the Windows 7 Enterprise
operating system, with a global deployment planned for 2010.
Benefits
Since deploying its technical computing
applications on the 64-bit version of the
Windows operating system, Apache has
seen significant improvements in system
performance. As a result, its geoscientists
are working more efficiently to make better
drilling and production decisions that help
the company compete in a race to locate
oil and gas in increasingly challenging
locations. And, by building a corporate
intranet portal using Office SharePoint
Server 2007, Apache has provided its
geoscientists around the world with an easy
way to share their expertise and build
corporate knowledge stores to drive
scientific insight throughout the company.
“Shifting to the Windows 64-bit environment generated huge productivity gains for
our geoscientists, helping Apache build a
competitive advantage in all areas of our
upstream operations,” says Lauritsen.
“Before, geoscientists
were waiting 20 minutes
for projects to load, but
with the new platform,
the same projects take
only five minutes.”
Bradley Lauritsen,
Manager of Exploration Computing,
Apache Corporation
Improved Application Performance by
50 Percent
Apache geoscientists at the Cairo and
Aberdeen sites report that the improved
memory management and processing
power gained by moving to the 64-bit
environment resulted in immediate application performance improvement. “Comparing [the performance of] Petrel software
running in the Windows operating system
32-bit environment to it running in the 64bit environment is like comparing night and
day,” says Lauritsen. “Before, geoscientists
were waiting 20 minutes for projects to
load, but with the new platform, the same
projects take only five minutes. Before, they
weren’t able to work with large amounts of
seismic data, but now they can see entire
regions on the screen without any issues.
Together, Petrel software and the 64-bit
version of the Windows operating system
have opened up a whole new world for our
geoscientists.”
In the Houston office, when Apache
launched the NetApp solution that takes
advantage of SMB 2, application performance jumped by 50 percent. “And when we
looked at initial results running Petrel 2009
on Windows 7 with the NetApp storage
solution, we saw yet another 25 percent
improvement in performance,” says
Lauritsen. “The Microsoft technical
computing story keeps getting better and
better.”
Increased Amount of Data Generated
and Used by 700 Percent
For geoscientists, information overload is a
good thing—but only if they have the right
software to help them handle huge files of
seismic and other geological data. Since
deploying Petrel 2009 in a technical computing scenario, Apache has seen a 700
percent growth in the amount of data
generated and used by its geoscientists.
This is a direct result of the improved data
processing capabilities of 64-bit Windows
computing and can be directly correlated
to increased productivity and better
business decision making for Apache
geoscientists.
“Our goal is to find and recover oil more
quickly and safely than our competition,
and we need huge amounts of data to do
that,” says Lauritsen. “Microsoft technical
computing technologies help us process
hitherto unheard of amounts of seismic
data, so we can build larger, more accurate
reservoir models to make better drilling
predictions and production decisions.”
With Petrel 2009 and petrophysics software
running in a Windows-based technical
computing environment, Apache geoscientists have the tools they need to help
the company accelerate time to finding oil,
optimize production, improve oil and gas
recovery rates, and reduce operational risk.
Better Collaboration
Now that Apache geoscientists can share
their expertise across more projects around
the world, the entire company benefits
from greater data availability and better
business insight. The company has created
a library of petrophysical workflows, technologies, best practices, core samples, and
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Microsoft Solutions for the
Manufacturing Industry
images that will help its scientists understand what’s going on in different regions.
Instead of working in isolation, scientists
can collaborate in more productive,
iterative workflows.
Manufacturing enterprises must compete in
an increasingly global environment.
Success depends on finding ever-greater
efficiencies throughout the enterprise,
while developing a greater agility to react
to local and global market opportunities.
These challenges are best answered with
technology from Microsoft and its partners.
Microsoft-based solutions offer much
needed value to manufacturers who are
under increasing pressure to generate
greater returns on the assets that they have
employed. This focus on efficiency scales
across all the critical functional areas—from
getting products to market faster, to
streamlining the supply chain, optimizing
the manufacturing operations, and
generating new revenue streams.
“Our experience with NetApp and
Schlumberger reaffirms how powerful the
Microsoft partner network is for the oil and
gas industry,” concludes Lauritsen.
For more information about NetApp
products and services, call (877) 2638277 or visit the Web site at:
www.netapp.com
For more information about Microsoft
solutions for the manufacturing industry,
go to:
For more information about
Schlumberger products and services, email sisinfo@slb.com or visit the Web site
at:
www.slb.com/en/services/software.aspx
For more information about Apache
Corporation products and services, call
(800) 272-2434 or visit the Web site at:
www.apachecorp.com
www.microsoft.com/resources/manufacturing
Software and Services
Windows 7 Enterprise 64-Bit
 Windows Vista Enterprise 64-Bit
 Microsoft Office
− Microsoft Office Enterprise 2007
− Microsoft Office SharePoint Server
2007
 Microsoft Server Product Portfolio
− Microsoft SQL Server 2008

Hardware

This case study is for informational purposes only.
MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.
NetApp is a registered trademark of NetApp, Inc. Petrel
is a registered trademark of Schlumberger.
Document published April 2010
Servers
− HP DL160 computers with dual
Intel Xeon X5482 processors and
32 gigabytes (GB) of RAM
Workstations
− HP Z800 computers with dual
Intel Xeon W5590 processors and
24 to 48 GB of RAM
− HP Z600 computers
 Storage Systems
− NetApp FAS6080, FAS3070 and
FAS3170 series systems

Partners


NetApp
Schlumberger