Trend

Storage vendors eye the energy vertical

The energy segment is a growth area for storage vendors in India. Although this segment is low in volumes, it is high in value with many enterprises going in for high-end storage solutions, says Abhinav Singh

A typical oil and gas exploration company is in search of oil and gas fields in a particular geographical area of the country. After a successful initial search, the company finds a field but it needs to explore deep within the earth’s surface (say, 30,000 feet) in the hope of striking oil or gas. To reduce the risks involved in exploratory drilling, a seismic survey is done to gather data to gauge the size and location of the oil field. However, this is not simple as huge volumes of data are collected from the seismic surface. In a typical seismic survey, the file size is around 55 GB. This data is in turn analysed by the seismic interpretation software such as Landmark Graphics. If the organisation wants to interpret seismic data, it needs to be stored in a high-capacity medium before it can be shifted to secondary storage. This data is extremely critical for oil exploration till the complete work analysis is being undertaken. The older seismic data is generally saved for long periods of time on cheaper storage. As the data is not accessed on a regular basis and is need-based it is kept on cheaper SATA storage drives or modular fibre channel arrays.

Srikant Chakrapani, consulting director, Hitachi Data Systems, explains, “The exploration of oil and gas fields involves interpreting seismic data pictures containing vital statistics. This data is then analysed by scientists to get meaningful information. Depending upon the interpretation, every file is edited and saved again. A survey generates more than a thousand files, each with a file size of 10 MB. This activity requires the storage infrastructure to be capable of holding capacities of 10 TB to 50 TB of storage per location.” This is just one example of the high-capacity storage requirements of an oil exploration company.

Now let’s move to the other side of the picture, where some oil companies in the retail sector such as Indian Oil Corporation (IOCL), Bharat Petroleum Corporation (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corporation (HPCL) supply oil and gas to end customers. Most oil and energy companies have implemented ERP and SCM solutions to integrate their systems with dealers and end-customers. These ERP and SCM solutions generate a large amount of data and the storage solution should ensure 100 percent data availability.

High-end storage

We are expecting an energy exploration boom in India which will generate terabytes of data requiring high-capacity storage solutions Anil Valluri Director, Systems Engineering, Sun Microsystems India	Data centres of oil companies that run ERP and SCM applications have a huge chunk of critical data which needs high-end storage Avijit Basu, Country Manager, StorageWorks, HP India Sales

While there are no industry statistics which show the deployment of high-end storage solutions in the energy sector, most vendors Express Computer spoke to believe that the energy segment accounts for 30 percent of the total storage market in India. The size of this segment is estimated to be valued in the range of $40 to $50 million. This is significant as the size of this segment was estimated to be $10 million in 2000.

Says Anil Valluri, director, Systems Engineering, Sun Microsystems India, “According to a government notification, all seismic-related data has to be analysed within the territorial waters of India. The government has also introduced bid-and-explore schemes for oil companies which will further drive exploration in the energy segment. We are expecting an energy exploration boom in India which will generate massive terabytes of data requiring high-capacity storage solutions.”

Towards storage consolidation

Many energy companies supplying oil to end consumers have large-scale operations with retail outlets spread across the country. Avijit Basu, country manager, StorageWorks, HP India Sales explains, “Most oil companies in retail have centralised their data centres, which are linked to different retail outlets in the country. These data centres have ERP and SCM applications linking them with their outlets and dealers. These applications generate a huge chunk of critical data which needs high-end storage.”

Multiple DR sites fuel growth

Retail oil majors have also gone in for nearsite (storage replication within the same city) and remote site storage (storage replication at other geographic locations). Oil retailers have gone in for multiple Disaster Recovery (DR) sites to protect critical customer data. Since the energy business demands protection of data without any downtime, almost all energy companies have DR sites. Most companies are now implementing multiple DR sites to ensure business continuity.

However DR and multiple DR sites are not very popular among oil exploration companies as they generate seismic data that is relatively static. If this data is inaccessible for a short span of time, it will not have a direct impact upon the business. Hence, preserving seismic data is a priority area rather than the fast retrieval of data. George Thomas, country manager, Network Appliance Systems India explains, “Retail oil and gas companies have many critical business applications such as ERP and SCM whose reliability has to be maintained. We are focusing in a big way on the energy segment and it remains a high growth area for us after the banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) and telecom verticals. Nearly five percent of our business at the global level comes from the energy segment.”

With an increase in the number of oil exploring and retailing companies in India, the demand for storage products is expected to be strong.

abhinav@expresscomputeronline.com