Microsoft Azure Data Manager for Energy: A fully managed OSDU Data Platform in the cloud

By Dave Wisenteiner, General Manager, Azure Energy

September 21, 2022

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Azure Data Manager for Energy

Through a series of deep industry partnerships, Microsoft delivers the first of its kind, managed OSDU^™ Data Platform in the cloud that unlocks operator’s data and connects it across applications in a secure and resilient environment, globally. OSDU is a standardized set of services, workflows, and data schemas that allow the industry to speak a common data language making data more accessible without being locked in by individual applications.

Microsoft Azure Data Manager for Energy, developed in collaboration with SLB, is now available in preview. Microsoft has built this fully managed, enterprise-grade service to OSDU Technical Standard. By adopting the platform, energy companies will have access to new ways of both managing and using their data as well as access to a wide range of applications from SLB and other independent software vendors (ISVs). Our rich partner ecosystem is key to delivering on customer expectations and the innovation potential that exists in the OSDU vision. With this release, Microsoft also brings connectivity to a range of our first-party applications that our customers and partners know and love.

Azure Data Manager for Energy is designed to help organizations get more value from their data by scaling ingestion and data enrichment, easy interoperability, and unlocking self-serve data analytics capabilities. With this solution, businesses can unlock data to work across multiple applications. The power of Microsoft Azure provides energy companies with the right compute stock keeping units (SKUs), improving efficiency by freeing them from focusing on infrastructure. With Azure Data Manager for Energy, energy companies can be up and running an OSDU Data Platform within hours. Customers can migrate their largest datasets and workloads to the cloud while continuing to use the familiar domain applications that they depend on to achieve data insights. Enabling these workflows on the platform will help drive improved operational efficiency and open connectivity to a range of cloud services.

In addition to having connectivity to SLB’s world-class applications out of the box, Microsoft maintains its commitment to build a global ecosystem of trusted partners. Azure Data Manager for Energy is built to be an extensible and open platform which embraces all OSDU Data Platform applications across the energy domain. Together, Microsoft and our global partners are advancing how energy companies optimize and interact with data.

Better data insights

“We see Microsoft Azure Data Manager for Energy as a comprehensive industry solution at–scale to transform data and application landscapes and liberate data from application silos. Wipro is a proud long-term partner of Microsoft in the energy industry and is fully ready to implement and operate this historic industry solution as the sector goes through a fundamental transformation.”—Sidharth Mishra, Vice President and Global Lead for Energy domain and consulting services, Wipro.

Data management is the cornerstone of energy companies’ long-term success. Decision makers rely on accurate data to improve confidence and minimize risk. The nature and size of data that energy companies manage daily are so large, that it can become cumbersome to access and distill. The problem of data management is becoming an increasing impediment to innovation and efficient operations.

For many companies, critical data is siloed inside a multitude of individual applications requiring considerable time, people, and money to discover, condition, simulate, and manage. To improve business management, reduce costs, and stay competitive, energy companies have an urgent need to liberate this data from individual applications so they can start to bring together previously disparate data for better decision-making. In upstream, for example, there has been a need for decades for the wells team to be able to access some of the seismic work but due to data location or permissions, this is often impossible.

The solution unifies data through a common data model allowing companies control over their own data while maintaining the benefit of their trusted third-party applications.

Improve operational efficiency

With the industry digitizing and decentralizing, moving from on-prem to the cloud means shorter run times, the ability to run applications simultaneously, and the elimination of queuing. Azure Data Manager for Energy is a fully managed, vendor-agnostic platform that can integrate with virtually any data set, application, or cloud service. A fully managed service means customers can rely on Microsoft for deployment, maintenance, manageability, upgrades, patch, and security—ensuring higher availability and scaling of services so customers can focus on end-user scenarios.

“Getting up and running on OSDU™ Data Platform, setting up provisioning, deployment, and sample data ingestion used to be a complex, multi-step process that took more than a week. Microsoft Azure Data Manager for Energy allowed the same to be accomplished in around 2 hours!”—Emile Veliyev, Director, OSDU™ Delivery, EPAM.

By increasing exploration confidence with improved predictive analytics and insights into the subsurface, for example, energy companies can increase model granularity, reduce unplanned downtime, and improve accuracy. Azure Data Manager for Energy enables energy companies to easily implement solutions that improve agility and optimize seismic, wellbore, and reservoir workflows.

“OSDU™ Data Platform installation has been greatly improved and simplified with Microsoft Azure Data Manager for Energy, facilitating our platform deployment. Keeping current with the latest releases allows our teams to focus on delivering high value workflows.” —Alice Chanvin, Director, Product Management (Data Management), AspenTech.

For the first time, not only will subsurface professionals be able to access their data across applications and workflows, but can also build their own apps, visualize the data, and automate on their own with low-code or no-code environments. A user can build an app for their own use or for the entire organization in minutes. From data managers to geoscientists to field staff, companies can also connect their findings to collaborate seamlessly using first-party productivity applications, such as Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Power BI, and Microsoft Power Automate.

Image of a chart showing how you can share critical data and collaborate with Microsoft first-party apps. — *Figure 1: Share critical data and collaborate with team members with connected Microsoft first-party apps*.

The Microsoft strategy is to help energy companies take advantage of the data they already have. Our customers have some of the largest data sets in the world and they need help getting more out of that data, and this is what Azure Data Manager for Energy is designed to do in collaboration with the entire ecosystem of industry partners and ISVs.

“Implementing the OSDU™ Data Platform as part of Microsoft Azure Data Manager for Energy is a relatively simple operation – so much easier than struggling to implement the OSDU™ Data Platform on your own and hard to imagine implementing without Microsoft Azure Data Manager for Energy.”—Bjorn Thorsen, CEO, RoQC.

Our global partner ecosystem

Microsoft’s robust ecosystem of trusted partners combined with our investment in data centers across the globe is part of our strategy and success in supporting customers.

Trusted advisors Accenture, Cegal, EPAM, Infosys, and Wipro join us as foundational support for a fully managed OSDU Data Platform to help energy companies migrate to the cloud, drive better decision-making, and optimize workflows. Partners such as Interica, Katalyst, and RoQC are ready for deployment for data ingestion and quality assurance and control. While AspenTech, Halliburton-Landmark, Bluware, INT, and of course SLB have solutions available which provide more optimal data management capabilities and higher productivity.

“Microsoft Azure Data Manager for Energy enable customers to realize the vision of seismic data in the cloud. Building on the foundation set by the OSDU™ Data Platform and Bluware OpenVDS, customers can quickly deploy existing workflows and explore modern cloud-native workflows with seamless integration. We are excited by the adoption of OpenVDS within the software vendor community and the cross-vendor collaboration that is supported by Microsoft on behalf of the energy industry.”—Andy James, Chief Product Officer, Bluware.

Get started

Get started with Microsoft Azure Data Manager for Energy and enable your data to do more on the cloud. This solution helps energy companies gain actionable insights, improve operational efficiency, and accelerate time-to-market. For energy producers and the partner companies who service them, Azure Data Manager for Energy is a fully managed and integrated cloud-based OSDU Data Platform that reduces the time, risk, and total costs of ownership associated with energy exploration and production.