Microsoft taps oil money to take cloud dreams stratospheric

Microsoft today announced that they are partnering with Halliburton, one of the world’s largest oil field service companies to digitally transform the oil and gas industry. This is a great partnership for both the companies as they can take advantage of each other’s strengths to deliver solutions for the oil and gas industry. Halliburton researchers and engineers can make use of Microsoft’s technologies in machine learning, AR, user interactions, hardware including HoloLens and Surface, IoT and Azure. Both the companies highlighted that areas of collaboration include applying deep learning to reservoir characterization, modeling and simulation, building domain-specific visualization for mixed reality, creating highly interactive applications and fueling the digitalization of E&P assets.

“Halliburton is focused on delivering intelligent cloud solutions to drive the next generation of efficient oil and gas exploration and production,” said Jason Zander, corporate vice president of Microsoft Azure. “We are excited to bring the power of Azure’s hyperscale, hybrid and global cloud platform technologies to this alliance to enhance the value chain for our mutual customers.”

Halliburton today also announced that they will make DecisionSpace 365 available on Azure which enables real-time data streaming from IoT edge devices in oilfields and the ability to apply deep-learning models to optimize drilling and production to lower costs for customers. Microsoft Azure is now Halliburton’s preferred public cloud provider for iEnergy, the oil and gas industry’s first global E&P cloud linking the oilfield to the office.

“Halliburton is at the forefront of the digital transformation occurring in the E&P industry,” said Nagaraj Srinivasan, senior vice president of Landmark and Halliburton Digital Solutions. “We believe open architecture and community-based innovation are necessary to drive this fundamental change and we’re proud to work closely with an industry leader like Microsoft to deliver tailored E&P digital business solutions to our customers across the globe.”