Sector: Oil and Gas

Client challenge: A leading oilfield service provider wanted to lower application maintenance costs, manage a complicated multivendor landscape, and introduce standardised processes

Benefits:

• A 20% improvement in application maintenance
• The alignment of technology initiatives with overall client business objectives
• Future-proofing the client’s entire technology stack
• Greater scalability for ramping up systems as required

The client

As a global leader in oilfield solutions, the client employs well over 100,000 professionals and provides the industry’s widest range of products and services from exploration to production.

Building upon an existing relationship that began in 2007, Capgemini and the client signed a five-year applications contract in 2013 to support the organisation’s legacy systems and reduce the cost of managing multiple vendors. The partnership was strengthened even further in 2015 and 2016, when Capgemini was able to transform the client’s entire application portfolio through the adoption of DevOps and Cloud assessment initiatives during an industry-wide recession.

The challenge

In the wake of the global downturn in the global oil and gas industry during 2015 and 2016, the client was looking for ways to limit spend – seeking flexibility in support system expenditures to control costs and exercise better judgment in future spend activities. High application maintenance costs, a complicated multivendor landscape, and an absence of standardised processes were also further aggravating these negative circumstances.

This resulted in the client signing a new contract with Capgemini in 2016, representing an early extension and regeneration of our Application Development and Maintenance (ADM) contract and the movement of more work to a managed services environment. This would provide the client with increased efficiency and higher productivity gains.

The solution and benefits

Moving from an FTE-based model to an agility-based delivery model, Capgemini now runs a comprehensive managed services engagement, delivering embedded efficiencies and productivity gains with ADMnext – a comprehensive portfolio of ADM assets and services aimed at delivering uninterrupted value and excellence. For the client, this translates into fixed spend predictability, but also enables flexibility in real-time for current projects based upon business demands.

Capgemini’s Mumbai-based delivery team and onsite resources provide support to the client with a focus on continuous improvement, innovation, and transformation. ADMnext tools such as FMA, CAST, Lean, and processes were implemented across the client’s application landscape and helped to reduce costs, deliver overall transparency, and enable greater SLA-requirement compliance. Capgemini’s work with the client here was essentially divided into two stories – a comprehensive DevOps adoption and a Cloud-first transformation with Capgemini’s Cloud Assessment (CCA).

DevOps adoption for faster release and enhanced application quality

The client was employing a traditional waterfall model for application development. It was a time-consuming and tedious task to manage the software development lifecycle for all applications. As a result, releases were inconsistent, which was impacting the client’s business through excessive downtime.

Capgemini helped assess the maturity of projects and define a DevOps implementation plan. Together with the client’s teams, Capgemini implemented new, agile DevOps processes across the organisation and vendor landscape.

In transforming from a waterfall to an Agile DevOps approach, Capgemini delivered the following:

• Drastically reduced User Acceptance Testing and Production defects
• A Regression Test Library with over 5,000 tools
• Comprehensive Agile SCRUM adoption across the entire landscape
• CI Implementation (with Quality Gate) for every project
• CD Implementation (with Quality Validation) for up to 80 of projects
• Standardised processes and tools aligned across all units
• Accomplishing DevOps goals with a minimum number of tools.

Capgemini’s Cloud transformation journey

The client wanted to move its portfolio of applications from its existing three data centres to a single Cloud-based environment to reduce IT costs and complexity.

Its existing application portfolio was running on multiple technology stacks and the client was looking to upgrade and repackage services by moving to the Cloud. To do so, Capgemini deployed its CCA solution to evaluate and design a Cloud transformation roadmap for Cloud-suitable apps with a detailed migration plan.

This led to a reduction in spend by about 20-30% with application migration to the Cloud, a reduction in hardware and OS procurement lead time, greater scalability for ramping up systems as needed, and established security and trade compliances, along with reusable templates for future migrations.

Capgemini’s CCA in action

Capgemini began surveying selected client applications and evaluated 232 potential Cloud candidates. This was followed by an evaluation of Cloud and migration patterns utilizing CCA’s assessment framework.

Next, Capgemini defined a Cloud transformation roadmap, formalising architecture principles and building a Cloud Decision Tree to determine Cloud density and migration patterns for applications.

Finally, Capgemini supported the execution of the Cloud migration with a POC to gain confidence in various complexities on GCP and Azure Cloud. Then, Capgemini prioritised the migration of identified applications in a time-boxed manner, migrating 76 applications to date.

CCA benefits

Overall, the benefits of Capgemini’s CCA Cloud-first transformation included:

• An updated Configuration Monitoring Database for a better view of the application portfolio
• Cost savings and efficiency gains on Data Centre closures
• Reduced TCO – much of the infrastructure management cost was transferred to the Cloud provider
• A future-proof technology stack through identifying and upgrading technology and platform standardisation
• Greater scalability for ramping up systems as required.

The road ahead with ADMnext

Supporting the client’s business with ADMnext enablers such as DevOps adoption and Capgemini’s CCA framework has been a huge success. Capgemini was able to provide the client with tangible, quantifiable benefits and intends to continue doing so in order to keep improving upon the value of the partnership. Future initiatives are likely to focus on specific technology challenges and problem areas, which will evolve as the engagement progresses.