Virtual Workstation Deployment in Malaysia Oil and Gas Company: Performance Improvement and Cost Reduction Experience

Abstract

The objective of the paper is to share the experience and result of deployment of Virtual Workstation in Malaysia Oil and Gas Company replacing the more expensive high-end workstation. This is a part of company's digital transformation program towards the 4th Industrial Revolution. VWS is a modern technology that accelerates and improves subsurface and petroleum engineering application and function. It replaces outdated high-end workstation set-up. In high-end workstation set-up, subsurface technical software was installed at user workstations. Master Data on the other hand, located at centralized data center, BDC; but in order for the user to retrieve the data, it has to go through regional data center at KPC first. All these processes happened through existing small 1 GB cable networks capacity. Separate software and data location, multiple location points for data retrieval and weaker cable network capacity lead to less efficient software performance and data insecurity. But in VWS set-up, issues of under-performed software and data security are eliminated. Now both software and data are installed and located at BDC. Then the user will access their software and data virtually via company's intranet at with the strength of 10 GB cable network capacity that VWS has. VWS deployment resulting in: i) Performance and productivity: increased efficiency for technical applications and optimization of technical resources. ii) Cost: optimization of cost on IT infrastructure. iii) HSE: Reduced IT footprint and energy consumption. iv) Data security: increased data security. v) Flexibility: improved collaboration for technical users. vi) Standardization: standardized desktop environment for enhanced support. VWS deployment only need the VWS system and standard normal workstation to function as good as the more expensive high-end workstation. With VWS, standard workstation is enough to process and run petroleum engineering software and data, since the workstation only act as a visualizer of their actual software and data that located in BDC. With deployment of standard workstation instead of high-end workstation, VWS expected to contribute to cost saving of RM 86k per user for 3 years of leasing.