Cross-vendor Integration in Exploration and Production Today


assert that OpenSpirit is used widely enough to qualify as a standard for E&P cross-vendor data integration. “OpenSpirit has become a de facto standard,” says the Director of Enterprise Integration for a large independent. “People use it because it works.”


Geological and Geophysical Database Integration OpenSpirit has built data connectors for about a dozen of the dominant industry databases, focusing initially on high-priority geological and geophysical (G&G) data types that its customers wanted to integrate. Its middleware platform defines a consistent data model that maps data from these repositories and provides data to applications that are properly enabled. Applications ‘see through’ the middleware directly into native multivendor databases. They do not need to recognise different data formats or transfer and replicate data.


Transparent data connectors expose vendors’ data stores to a broader audience without forcing vendors to spend a fortune on reinventing the wheel. OpenSpirit offers what one software developer calls “the path of least resistance,” as well as a lower-cost solution. “OpenSpirit maintains data connectors to a wide range of external systems, which would be too expensive for us to maintain on our own,” he adds. Data connectors enable end-users to leverage


A newer approach to data integration is ‘middleware’, so-called because it is neither an application nor a database. It is a layer of consistent data exchange protocols that sits in the ‘middle’.


multiple vendors’ solutions in individualised, fit-for-purpose workflows. They also provide oil company personnel with a consistent way to link in-house technologies to commercial data stores without going through the usual barriers. Since many companies have grown through mergers and acquisitions, this kind of data connectivity enables them to link disparate, unwieldy portfolios of applications and databases.


While its footprint remains primarily in geology and geophysics, OpenSpirit has revamped its architecture and data model so that it can be extended to engineering, production and other data types, based on customer demand.


However, data-level integration is only part of the story. Several experts explained that OpenSpirit also provides an intriguing level of application interoperability, which may be the company’s best-kept secret. Apparently, OpenSpirit is the industry’s only vendor-independent solution for application-level integration.


Cross-vendor Application Interoperability For years, ‘application integration’ in E&P took place primarily by way of an underlying database. Different pieces of software – typically from one vendor – ‘shared’ data by sending messages to and from


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tables in a common project database. To a user it looked like two applications were talking with each another; in fact, they were cleverly chatting via a database.


True software interoperability enables two applications to act like a single, integrated application by sharing actions and events – without the intervention of a database. The benefits lie in saving time by streamlining and customising workflows and hopefully in discovering something new, like using two eyes instead of one to get binocular vision.


“OpenSpirit is involved in application interoperability quite strongly,” says Perigon’s Grant Monaghan. When software vendors or oil companies decide to ‘OpenSpirit-enable’ any of their products, they obtain OpenSpirit’s SDK, which includes all the necessary application programming interface, code, libraries and a test project. OpenSpirit provides support and answers technical questions. The result is an application adapter, or ‘plug-in’, that provides a single connection to OpenSpirit’s middleware – and automatic interoperability with any other OpenSpirit-enabled application, regardless of vendor.


“By enabling interoperability across various operating systems, such as Solaris, Linux and Windows, we’re removing all barriers to application and data integration,” says Suri Bhat, OpenSpirit’s Product Marketing Director. “We’re providing oil companies and our vendor partners with interoperability choices they never had before.”


According to users, OpenSpirit-enabled applications interoperate in several ways. For example, ‘data selection events’ enable geoscientists to examine the same data in different analytical tools. A ‘cursor tracking event’ further enables them to simultaneously track the same XYZ locations in different applications.


“To me, OpenSpirit is a no-brainer,” adds Grant Monaghan. “A smaller vendor’s products can be more readily accepted alongside major applications without duplicating data. Maintaining one plug-in versus a lot of bespoke adapters could save us tens of thousands of pounds – or more – a year. I can’t think of a single reason not to have an OpenSpirit application plug-in.”


Performance and Growth


While some interviewees mentioned that OpenSpirit’s middleware had performance issues in the early days, development of its next-generation infrastructure, enhancements to its open SDK and upgrading its application programming interfaces have apparently laid this concern to rest. As a result, the company has been signing an increasing number of enterprise-level deals with oil and gas companies. According to Shell’s Herb Yuan, “Companies are taking a more strategic approach, asking themselves: ‘How can we integrate all of our applications, not just one or two?’”


Conclusion


Is OpenSpirit the ultimate solution to the upstream industry’s cross- vendor integration problem? That remains to be seen, but as SMT’s Arshad Matin concludes, “OpenSpirit is the only solution that provides a complete, vendor-neutral platform for E&P data exchange and application interoperability.” n


EXPLORATION & PRODUCTION – VOLUME 8 ISSUE 2


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