Saturday, January 19, 2008

HP Upbeat On Oil, Gas Sector With High Performance Solutions

Hyderabad: Technology major Hewlett-Packard is upbeat on the oil and gas sector with its consultancy and high performance computing solutions.

The requirement for high performance computing (HPC) solutions is poised for a quantum leap as exploration companies are trying to compress time and keep pace with new technologies for precision-driven predictions for oil and gas discovery and exploitation.

HPC environment is where clusters of computers or supercomputers are set up to improve processing efficiency and enhance productivity. These are ideal for data intensive applications.

The Director of Global Energy Industries, HP, M. Douglas Hansen, told Business Line that most oil exploration companies are now forced to think out of box, be innovative in the way they work.

Most oil companies are either upgrading their infrastructure or seeking flexible computing services that help manage their technology infrastructure. These could be through the likes of Schlumberger, Halliburton and Landmark among others, with all of whom HP works with HPC solutions, he said.

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“There is explosion of data, and this needs to be interpreted with other dimensions such a visual imaging and other elements. This is where HPC solutions make a difference,”. Hansen said.

New technologies

HP Labs is working on a host of new technologies in India, both within and through other players in the industry such as Nvidia. The effort is to bring in gaming-related technology solutions on to the HPC environment. So is the case with the virtual conferencing facility called Halo. Convergence and collaboration of all these technologies are helping companies better analyse data at a much faster pace, he explained.

The company platforms are deployed at HPCL, IOCL, ONGC and Oil India. These are very large scale deployments and the HP platforms deployed have been consistent in supporting business critical enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems.

“We are in discussions with the likes of ONGC to expand our relationship through consultancy services and also in providing HPC solutions for dimensional exploration-related work across the company data centres,” Hansen explained.

Demand up

The Country Manager, HPC Solutions Group, HP India, Faisal M. Paul, said that HP was associated in creating one of the world’s largest supercomputing environments at Tata’s research centre and the demand for HPC environment has increased.

As a part of these HPC solutions, HP has expanded its partnerships and work engagement with system integrators and independent software vendors, Paul explained.

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