The Information Store sought to provide its Digital Oilfield solutions to independent oil producers at a lower cost. It selected the Windows Azure platform to develop its online PetroTrek solution, allowing faster deployment and reducing upfront capital costs by up to 90% compared to on-premises infrastructure. Using Windows Azure's subscription model, small businesses can access the same solutions as large oil companies at a fraction of the traditional cost. The Information Store expects the new offering to increase operational efficiency for customers through lower IT expenses.

1. Windows Azure
Partner Solution Case Study
Solution Developer Expects to Boost Efficiency
with Software-plus-Services Strategy
Overview “Ifwe compare the upfront cost of the two deployment
Country or Region : United States
Industry: Oil and gas models, I would estimate that using Windows Azure
could save customers as much as 90 percent in some
Partner Profile
Since 1994, Houston, Texas–based cases.”
software company The Information
Thinh Pham, Senior Architect, The Information Store
Store® (iStore) has specialized in
helping petroleum companies access
exploration and production data,
improve asset performance, and reduce
The Information Store® helps global petroleum companies
cycle time. access exploration and production data irrespective of where the
Busines s Situation
data resides and presents it in a useful and familiar form. To
The iStore sought a solution to increase maintain its competitive advantage, the company was eager to
operational efficiency, speed
deployment, reduce upfront capital
find a cost-effective way to extend its industry-leading
costs, and lower ongoing operating PetroTrek® solutions to independent oil producers. The company
expenses.
evaluated two “software as a service”offerings and selected the
Solution Windows Azure™ platform—an Internet-scale “cloud services”
The company adopted the Windows
Azure™ platform as the foundation for
platform that is hosted in Microsoft® data centers—as the
its online Digital Oilfield solution, which foundation for its online Digital Oilfield solution, along with
also incorporates Microsoft® SQL Azure,
the Silverlight™ browser plug-in, and
Microsoft SQL Azure, the Silverlight™ browser plug-in, and
Bing™ maps. Bing™ maps for enterprise. The company expects to increase
Benefits
the operational efficiency of its customers by reducing upfront
• Speeds deployment capital costs, reducing deployment cycles from months to days,
• Reduced upfront capital cost
• Lowers ongoing operational
and lowering ongoing operating expenses.
expenses

2. “Ifwe could give Situation production data. Many of the industry’s
For nearly 15 years, The Information top-tier oil companies have adopted
independent operators Store® (iStore) has operated under the PetroTrek Digital Oilfield solutions and
simple premise that having the right incorporated them into their on-premises
access to Digital Oilfield information at the right time is the key to IT infrastructures.
solutions with the same good decision making, especially when it
comes to petroleum exploration and However, iStore is keenly aware that the
functionality as the ones production data. In fact, the Houston, independent operators in the United
Texas–based company was founded by States (not the top-tier companies)
we’vedeveloped for the a group of geologists, geophysicists, produce the majority of the country’soil
supermajors and engineers, and computer scientists and natural gas—68 percent oil and 85
following an industry-wide effort in the percent gas—and drill nearly 90 percent
national oil companies, late 1980s to improve data management of the nation’swells on an annual basis.
practices.
we could revolutionize “There are approximately 5,000
exploration and From the beginning, iStore—a Microsoft® independent operators in the United
Gold Certified Partner—has pioneered States, and the majority of them are
production in the United the use of advanced technologies to small businesses with one to 20
solve data access problems for its employees,”explains Ben Parker,
States.” customers. Using Microsoft Office Director of Marketing at The Information
Ben Parker, Director of Marketing, SharePoint® Server 2007, the company Store. “Ifwe could give independent
The Information Store developed the PetroTrek® Asset operators access to Digital Oilfield
Management and Digital Oilfield solution solutions with the same functionality as
suites. These business solutions offer the ones we’vedeveloped for the
efficient and cost-effective management supermajors and national oil companies,
of vast amounts of remote data stored we could revolutionize exploration and
across multiple disparate and production in the United States. With the
incompatible databases. By organizing right technology, smaller independents
and presenting information in an intuitive could potentially transform the way they
way—and eliminating the need for operate and collaborate, helping to
extracting and storing data before use— maximize production in the United
PetroTrek solutions help customers States. The problem is that Digital
reduce complexity, time, cost, and Oilfield technology solutions often
errors. require infrastructure purchases—
hardware, software licenses, IT support,
By incorporating sophisticated Web- etc.—that become cost prohibitive for
based technologies, such as Microsoft small-business owners. The good news
Silverlight™ browser plug-in and Bing™ is that we can equip these exploration
maps for enterprise into the solution, and production professionals with tools
iStore provides its customers with a that have, until now, simply been out of
robust framework for accessing, reach.”
analyzing, reporting, and distributing
business-critical exploration and

3. “We be able to provide
’ll iStore was looking for a Digital Oilfield iStore also chose Windows Azure
solution delivery model that levels the because of its subscription cost model,
value to our customers playing field for independent oil which makes it possible for small and
producers that would increase midsize businesses to access Digital
right away because operational efficiency, speed Oilfield technology at a fraction of the
Windows Azure helps us deployment, reduce upfront capital costs, cost of an on-premises deployment.
and lower ongoing operating expenses. “We re
’ also excited that with Windows
eliminate a lot of Solution Azure we can deploy very rapidly and
To offer a Digital Oilfield solution that cost-effectively and scale easily,”says
operational hurdles.” would help businesses reduce their IT Oscar Teoh, Vice President of
Tod Magstadt, Strategic Planning and infrastructure costs, iStore—with the Operations at The Information Store.
Project Manager, The Information Store assistance of CSC, an iStore and “Our customers don’thave to spend
Microsoft Gold Certified Partner— money on hardware and software, and
investigated the possibility of adopting a we don’thave to spend time on
software-plus-services approach. The administrative tasks related to
company evaluated two solutions: the infrastructure. We can put all of our effort
Windows Azure™ technology platform into our core competencies.”
and Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud
(EC2). The company selected the In September 2009, iStore initiated the
Windows Azure platform—an internet- first step toward developing PetroTrek
scale “cloud computing”services Online™ —the hosted version of its
platform hosted in Microsoft data flagship technology offering—and began
centers. The Windows Azure platform, migrating the existing technology code to
which provides a range of functionality to the Windows Azure platform. “We re
’
build applications that span from used to working in the Microsoft
consumer Web to enterprise scenarios, environment,”Pham says. “All of the
includes a cloud services operating components of Windows Azure are very
system and a set of developer services. familiar to us, so deploying to Windows
Azure is not much different than
“Wefelt that the Windows Azure platform deploying to a local data center.”
had more to offer than Amazon EC2
because it is a total platform,”says Thinh In addition to using internal resources,
Pham, Senior Architect at The iStore is taking advantage of the
Information Store. “Inaddition to the expertise that CSC brings to the project
operating system, the platform includes as a result of its participation in the
Microsoft SQL Azure for extending Windows Azure Technology Adoption
storage to the cloud. With Windows Program. CSC is ensuring that the
Azure, we also have peace of mind application architecture is optimized for
knowing that Microsoft is maintaining the deployment on Windows Azure, and it is
image. All we have to do is deploy the also assisting iStore in performance
software and run it. It’sbasically engineering, development, and
foolproof.” commercialization of its product.

4. The company plans to begin offering
PetroTrek Online in 2010.
Benefits
Using the Windows Azure platform,
iStore is in the process of developing a
cost-effective, scalable model for its
PetroTrek technology. The company
expects to speed deployment, reduce
upfront capital costs, and lower ongoing
operating expenses.

5. “With Windows Azure, Web-based solution speeds “Ifwe compare the upfront cost of the
deployment. The elastic resource model two deployment models, I would
we know the data is in of Windows Azure removes hurdles for estimate that using Windows Azure
cloud-based PetroTrek deployment as could save customers as much as 90
good hands because it’s compute and storage resources are percent in some cases, such as new
being hosted by provisioned on-demand. In the past, deployments with brand new hardware,”
iStore would spend one to two months says Pham. “It the difference between
’s
Microsoft. Microsoft is getting on-site infrastructure in place for a few hundred dollars for Azure, versus a
its on-premises deployments. “With few hundred thousand dollars for on-
our IT department—it Windows Azure, we going to cut that
’re premises.”
doesn get much better
’t down to a matter of days instead of
months,”says Tod Magstadt, Strategic Also, because Microsoft manages the
than that.” Planning and Project Manager at The infrastructure and iStore manages the
Information Store. “We be able to
’ll solution, customers can dramatically
Oscar Teoh, Vice President of
Operations, The Information Store
provide value to our customers right reduce the IT footprint in the context of
away because Windows Azure helps us this solution. This translates into
eliminate a lot of operational hurdles.” substantial IT overhead cost reduction.
“With Windows Azure, we know the data
Hosted delivery model reduce s is in good hands because it’sbeing
upfront costs and ongoing operating hosted by Microsoft,”Teoh concludes.
expense s . Using Windows Azure “Microsoft is our IT department—it
dramatically improves IT and business doesn’tget much better than that.”
alignment by allowing the business to
move at the speeds dictated by market
forces. Because the data, applications,
and services are hosted in the Microsoft
data centers, customers no longer have
to invest time, money, and effort in
procuring, configuring, and maintaining
infrastructure.

6. For More Information Windows Azure Platform
For more information about Microsoft The Windows Azure platform provides
products and services, call the an excellent foundation for expanding
Microsoft Sales Information Center at online product and service offerings. The
(800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the main components include:
Microsoft Canada Information Centre • Windows Azure. Windows Azure is
at (877) 568-2495. Customers in the the development, service hosting, and
United States and Canada who are service management environment for
deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach the Windows Azure platform. Windows
Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) Azure provides developers with on-
services at (800) 892-5234. Outside demand compute and storage to host,
the 50 United States and Canada, scale, and manage Web applications
please contact your local Microsoft on the Internet through Microsoft data
subsidiary. To access information centers. In addition, Windows Azure
using the World Wide Web, go to: serves developers connectivity needs
’
www.microsoft.com through the following services.
〉 The Service Bus connects
For more information about The services and applications across
Information Store products and network boundaries to help
services, call (713) 787-6798 or visit developers build distributed
the Web site at: applications.
www.istore.com 〉 The Acces s Control Service
provides federated, claims-based
For more information about CSC access control for REST Web
services.
products and services, call (800)
272-0018 or visit the Web site at: • Microsoft SQL Azure. Microsoft SQL
Azure offers the first cloud-based
www.csc.com/cenr
relational and self-managed database
service built on Microsoft SQL Server®
Additional Resources: 2008 technologies.
Download: Windows Azure Platform
Training Kit
To learn more about the Windows Azure
View: Architecting and Developing for
Windows Azure platform, visit:
www.windowsazure.com
Software and Services • Solutions
• Windows Azure Platform − Software-plus-services
− Windows Azure
− Microsoft SQL Azure Partners
• Technologies • CSC
− Microsoft Silverlight 3
− Bing Maps for Enterprise
This case study is for informational purposes only.
MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS
OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.
Document published November 2009