IBM and Amazon Web Services (AWS) have announced they are collaborating to develop a comprehensive data tool for the energy sector.

The new partnership will combine IBM Open Data for Industries for IBM Cloud Pak for Data and the AWS Cloud.

The two companies say that the solution, which is built on Red Hat OpenShift, will simplify the ability for oil and gas companies to run workloads in the AWS cloud and on-premises.

The technology businesses have also said that they intend to collaborate on further co-development of future functionality.

"Data is a critical asset to help fuel energy transition, yet too often energy companies must choose between running applications on-premises or in the cloud, and often each deployment uses a proprietary data format," said Manish Chawla, global managing director, energy, resources and manufacturing, IBM. "This means that rather than using all of that collective data to gather insights, augment operations and inform innovation, some of it was going unused. "

Chawla added that the collaboration is addressing the need to make it easier for energy companies to access their data.

IBM said that because the energy industry is facing pressure to reduce greenhouse gases while demand for affordable energy continues to rise, oil companies need digital technologies that help drive efficiencies to free up capital, time, and resources to invest in more sustainable energy sources. But research from the multinational found that while data and digital tech can help this transition, less than half of oil and gas executive respondents are using data to do so.

"Much of the data needed to solve the complex energy challenges, such as superior subsurface decisions, already exists, yet is untapped,” said Bill Vass, vice president, engineering, AWS. “This is because one of the greatest values of that data is derived when it can be effectively combined, but usually this data is locked by data residency requirements, legacy applications or proprietary data formats.

"By collaborating with IBM and leveraging Red Hat OpenShift, we will be able to offer customers a global, seamless offering with the flexibility to run on virtually any IT infrastructure and drive longer-term digital innovation."

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