Investing in infrastructure

O&G. What part do you think IT can play in the future search for hydrocarbon resources?
JO. Anything we can determine about hydrocarbon reservoirs is indirect knowledge garnered via processing data from remote sensing. The trend of collecting this data in real time with finer and finer resolution will continue in the future. This data is becoming too large and, as such, will need to be pre-processed, quasi real-time, in the field. IT will have to provide this computing power in the form of robust, mobile data-centres on-shore or offshore.

Further to this, researchers are working on very sophisticated algorithms which will allow much more precise views of the underlying geological structure. Future IT will be challenged to build the large compute clusters that will be needed to drive these new simulation engines to provide true real time processing (4D).

Finally, there is the huge challenge faced by IT and the oil industry by the digital oil field. Future systems should be able to drive the production of wells, as a function of demand on the worldwide market.

O&G. How do you think Sun Microsystems can help?
JO. Sun Microsystems has the largest range of technologies and solutions for the O&G industry than ever before. Sun has created a unique technology that is a data-centre in a container. Sun Modular Data Centre has several standard computer racks in which data centre equipment may be mounted. All you need to supply is power, chilled water and a network.

Sun also has unique experience in successfully building some of the worlds largest compute clusters with it unique 3456 port Infiniband switch, for example, 11,000 cores for TiTech in Japan, 25,000 cores for KISTI in Korea, and 52,000 cores for TACC in USA.

O&G. What are your thoughts on the growth of Linux in the hydrocarbon IT industry?
JO. Linux has been the operating system of choice of the O&G ISV community for some time and continues to enjoy that position. However, Linux has not lived up to its promises of no cost or compatibility.

Solaris is gaining strong ground in this space. Driven by its maturity, open source, and strong resilience features, Solaris 10 is being requested more and more by our customers. The proof of this momentum is that both IBM and Dell have endorsed Solaris and are distributing it on most of their mid-range to high-end servers.

Sun Microsystems' great strength today is that we sell and support Solaris, Linux and Microsoft Windows on our system offerings. This is one of the compelling reasons the O&G industry is so interested in our infrastructure.

O&G. Can you give us key differentiators for Sun compared to other market players?
JO. The first is the latest example of Sun’schip multithreading technology, the UltraSparc T2 processor. On this chip there are eight processor cores, four memory controllers with formidable bandwidth to memory, PCIe controller and 10 gigabit ethernet interface. In truth this is a “computer on a chip”. This processor has the largest throughput on the planet and yet draws a fraction of the power of conventional processors. This processor is a huge energy saver and our strongest sales performer.

Sunray is an ultra-thin client that has no disk, no processor and no memory. All the operating systems and applications are installed on redundant Sunray servers installed and managed centrally in data-centres, providing true session mobility, delivering Windows, Linux, and Solaris applications on the same device simultaneously.

And finally, for several years now Sun has been the acknowledged market leader in identity management solutions. The access manager controls access to the many different systems within a company that require secure access making it a simple matter to change or remove an employees access to IT tools.

O&G. The O&G market is rapidly changing. How is Sun addressing this?
JO. As a major player in IT, Sun has always been focused on the O&G industry. Now, Sun has just announced the formation of our new emerging markets region, which includes several oil-rich countries such as Russia, Saudi Arabia, North and Western Africa. With this recent announcement, Sun will be investing even more heavily in this industry with the objective of capturing new markets and customers.

Jeff Olds is the O&G Business Development Manager for Sun Microsystems covering Middle East and North Africa. With over 25 years in IT, Jeff has been covering the O&G industry in MENA for 7 years. Jeff graduated from the University of Queensland, Australia in 1983 with a BE and BSc.