News

Afren now ranked 3rd in UK main board peer group

After the entry of ISN client, Afren plc (AFR.L), into the Kurdistan region of Iraq, they are now ranked 3rd amongst UK independent oil companies by last reported net 2p and 2C reserves.

The acquisition of Kurdistan’s Barda Rash and Ain Sifni assets increase Afren’s recoverable reserves from 136 mmboe to 1,026 mmboe.

ISN continue to provide IT support and consultancy to Afren at their London HQ as well as Houston, Lagos and their African production well sites.

ISN are currently working on a drilling comms project for Tullow Oil plc Ghana (TLW.L), the UK’s largest independent, equipping the Sedco Energy rig with VSAT and IT systems.

ISN has worked with 4th ranked Premier Oil plc (PMO.L) for a number of years on a range of IT and comms projects.

Many congratulations to Afren on their newest acquisitions and continued growth!

Make no mistake, despite very public emarrassments at Sony and Amazon, cloud computing is here to stay. IT providers need to embrace the paradigm and IT users need to see beyond the hype and plan the best delivery platform for the services their business depends on.

(In fact the cloud paradigm is not so new: BT deliver voice and the BBC deliver TV and radio from “the cloud” to customers who have no involvement with the technology or processes that the services depend on).

Sony left a security loophole which allowed thousands of Playstation users’ details to be revealed. Amazon carried out a network upgrade which went wrong and denied companies access to AWS services for 10 days.

There are two lessons that I would draw from these recent incidents:

One: No one is too big to fail

The first is not to make assumptions about the performance, reliability or security of cloud IT services just because they are delivered by a huge multinational. You would imagine that Microsoft, Google, Sony and Amazon has armies of highly qualified and experienced IT staff, manning vast datacentres providing the finest available IT services. You’d be right, but that didn’t stop all four organisations having falures in systems or security relating to cloud services in the last couple of years. There will undoubtedly be more.

An intelligent approach to using cloud services would be to ensure that you do not place too much reliance on one provider: Amazon client companies who handled the AWS outage best had actually planned for such an eventuality and had a failover plan ready. Some were able to get going again in less 15 minutes.

The same logic that applies to any IT system applies to cloud services: plan for the day when it will fail and don’t assume that it is immune because of a particular brand name.

Two: Reversed economy of scale?

The other lesson is that big providers, despite having virtually limitless resources, do make attractive targets for organised hacking campaigns. It wasn’t heavily publicised at the time but in January 2010, Google discovered that they were being comprehensively hacked by the Chinese. The doors were subsequently bolted and Google even took steps to hack the perpetrators back. However, given that the Chinese government are likely to have every line of Google code up to January 2010, at what point should businesses become confident enough to switch their email to the Google platform?

Oil & gas companies have plenty to worry about on this score since the global energy industry was targeted by a well-organised network hacking campaign in Februuary 2011 – dubbed Night Dragon by McAfee.

Our recommendation is that companies should examine the pros and cons of any IT service, cloud or onsite, from the perspectives of performance, security, service levels and features as well as cost. A knee-jerk reaction aimed at reducing the cost of an expensive IT department could easily backfire if the decision were entered into without some detailed analysis beforehand.

Now that Internet connections are faster, cheaper and more reliable, offering services across the net can be a reality.

This year I have sat through too many presentations on the topic of Cloud Computing. These are usually at vendor events where they explain how their products are the key to unlocking the benefits of Cloud Computing.

Along with Virtualisation, the “Cloud” has been one the favourite buzzwords of sales and marketing people across the land. These dull slideshows usually begin with “What is Cloud Computing? If you ask 10 people you’ll get 10 different answers” Yawn. Next they give the example of SalesForce.com as a leader in the field. As if we didn’t know. (The BBC have been offering “cloud” services for decades: you don’t have to have a band in your living room to listen to some music, like you used to in the olden days).

#CloudForce

The truth is that most people in business and the IT industry have a crystal clear understanding of what Cloud services offer. This was apparent from the packed audience of at least a thousand eager attendees at SalesForce’s CloudForce event yesterday at the Novotel in Hammersmith.

#SalesForce’s charismatic CEO Marc Benioff gave a compelling and very polished keynote presentation of how their products are changing how companies can get better applications to their staff far more quickly and far more affordably.

Quick effective ERP over the web

Benioff drew in senior staff from companies such as BMC Software, Vetrazzo and the Daily Telegraph. For example Vetrazzo started up 4 years ago and turn recycled glass into kitchen worktops: they developed a whole business process management system in a few months using custom tools from SalesForce. The result is that they have something which is available to all their locations via the web and can be modified really easily to suit changing or new requirements.

#ITIL Helpdesk Example

BMC Software, vendors of helpdesk application Remedy, explained how they developed a fully functional ITIL conformant helpdesk system within 4 weeks. ISN are committed to using the ITIL framework throughout our company to deliver better service to our customers. So we were very interested to hear about this in particular.

#Cloud computing business tools

ISN have been using SalesForce.com for a few years now and find it a great improvement over other CRM systems we tried. We will be looking very closely at using SalesForce’s newest tools to develop new systems that support our own business and for opportunities where cloud services from #SalesForce and other organisations can help our clients businesses too.

Windows 7 is the latest desktop and laptop operating system out of the Microsoft stable and it’s a thoroughbred from the start. As one of ISN’s desktop specialists, I have been using it for some time now. I like it a lot.

Better Performance

It’s faster than Windows XP and much faster than the ill-fated Vista, due to smaller resident memory requirements. Windows 7 installs far more quickly than either of its predecessors.

• Faster to startup – the record for booting a quad core PC is 19 seconds
• 64 bit version available – meaning your applications could use up to 192GB of memory
• Faster searches – find files and folders faster and more easily than in Vista or XP
• Back compatibility – run older programs in a virtual Windows XP window
• Better power management – longer battery life: some of the latest laptops can run for 6 hours or more.

Windows 7 is capable of running on existing hardware and so the PC you use today will probably be usable for the next few years: all it will need is the new operating system.

New usability features

With new features and improvements under the hood, people will be impressed with the speed and the improved stability, thus reducing the need to call your helpdesk and making it easier to get stuff done.

• New Taskbar – pin common apps to the taskbar; preview open application windows.
• Left/Right alignment – easily use two applications side by side, each occupying half your screen
• Aero Shake – May be a gimmick rather than a feature, but still handy. Grab and shake any application title bar with the mouse and all other windows minimise!

New enterprise capabilities

When used with Windows Server 2008 R2, you will be able to use new features that link with Windows 7 and provide added value to the software.

• DirectAcess – automatic VPN connection
• BranchCache – data replication and sharing
• VPN Reconnect – seamless reconnection when moving between networks (e.g. wi-fi points)

All in all, it should bring an increase in productivity and a reduction of desktop problems, bringing new life to existing hardware.

ISN client, Premier Oil, began oil production in the Shelley field at 9am on Thursday 6th August. This is the first fruits following Premier’s takeover of Oilexco NOrth Sea assets earlier this year. The announcement of a second well is expected imminently.

ISN have been pleased to assist Premier Oil with the IT and telecomms work involved in merging the Oilexco infrastructure.

Find out more about ISN’s work providing IT and telecomms consultancy to the oil and gas sector.

Today several businesses and employees are waking up to a uncertain future in central London. On Friday a large scale fire broke out in Dean Street, Soho, gutting at least one business and leading to a large number of residents being evacuated for many hours.

Whether the fire could have been prevented remains unclear. Maybe the business involved has the ability to continue to trade; if not, they will have a number of difficult questions to answer about business continuity and disaster recovery.

If you have a disaster recovery plan, you hope never to use it. Putting one in place however, along with enabling technologies, would drastically reduce the downtime casued by an actual disaster, while improving the underlying infrastructure for day to day operations.

Impact analysis

ISN advise customers to regularly carry out business impact analysis of each business unit of their organisation. Understanding how a disaster would affect each business unit, in terms of hard and soft costs (lost orders and loss of future orders through brand degradation) is critical to developing a robust strategy to tackle any disaster. Getting your data to the right people quickly is a decisive point in allowing your business to continue.

Understanding that your data is not the only issue to deal with: new equipment, offices, and infrastructure may also be required. Implementing plans so that every member of your business understands how to continue with business as usual, in the event of a massive business outage is key.

Solutions

ISN recommends organisations look at technologies such as virtualisation, storage and offsite backups to help circumvent these situations. Mirrored storage would allow you to have you mission critical data to be centralised off your main site and allow for replication back to your head office when new equipment is installed. That, coupled with technologies such as Citrix XenApp to allow users to work from home as if they were in the office, means you lose fewer working days. If you are small enough not to need to shared storage, offsite back up can cut data restore times and get your business going again very quickly.

Next steps

ISN provides business impact analysis for organisation and provides disaster recovery planning services, in the form of a workshop. Our aim is to ensure that in the event of your business being involved in any disaster scenario, it quickly returns to business as usual instead of becoming business confusion.

London based IT consultancy ISN Solutions are pleased to congratulate one of our engineering team leaders, Nilesh Vaghela, on passing his Citrix Certified Administrator (CCA) exam today with a mark of 96%!

The high mark may be because Nilesh already has a great deal of practical experience in Citrix software solutions. He is valued by many of ISN’s clients as a consultant who can resolve IT issues and implement new IT solutions quickly, effectively and without fuss.

ISN has five other engineers who have gained the the CCA qualification, however Nilesh is the first to pass the newly released XenApp v5 exam.

For more information on what Citrix XenApp, XenServer and XenDesktop can do for your company, please contact one of our specialist solutions consultants on 020 7313 9900.

Congratulations to Tom Clowes, ISN’s senior support consultant, for passing NetApp’s Accredited Storage Architect Professional exam with a score of 90%!

This followed an intensive course at #NetApp UK HQ in Stockley Park where Tom was able to brush up on his knowledge of storage technology in general as well as learn all there is to know about the range of SAN and NAS storage solutions offered by NetApp.

This covered training on FAS2020, FAS2050, FAS3000 series and all the way up to FAS6080 filers as well as the core Snapshot technology which translates to easy data backup, file and volume restore (in seconds, not hours)and storage replication technology that is unmatched by any other vendor.

If you would like to explore how NetApp storage solutions can help your business, please contact us on 020 7313 9900 to arrange a demonstration, or come along to one of our short Demo Cafe briefings.

The annual conference for the EAGE – European Association of Geologists & Engineers – took place in Amsterdam last week – 8th to 11th June. A great opportunity for professionals in geophysics, petroleum exploration, geology, reservoir engineering, mining and civil engineering to get together for one of the key events of the oil and gas IT calendar.

As an IT infrastructure specialist for the Oil & Gas industry, London-based IT consultancy ISN Solutions partnered storage vendor Isilon Systems on their stand at the show. ISN have much experience of consultancy, design, project management, installation and support of IT and comms infrastructure for the oil & gas exploration and production sector.

With seismic data storage very much on the agenda and new applications for its manipulation and interpretation being showcased, ISN and Isilon where kept busy with interest on how best to manage the obvious storage implications, not just now, but allowing for likely growth patterns into the future.

Isilon’s scale-out NAS products offer unparalleled speed of access, uptime and cost effectiveness for storage of seismic data. Having evaluated the options available in the marketplace, we have been impressed by how easy  Isilon clustered NAS arrays are to manage and maintain. We have seen nothing that scales so well, while still maintaining extremely fast response times. Isilon’s product range includes solutions for storage needs from 5 Terabytes to over 5 Petabytes. Ideal for many geoscience applications.

Call us on 020 7313 9900  to tell us more about your storage challenges.

Cloud computing is one of this year’s hot topics. In a nutshell, it means locating your computing resources somewhere else, usually in a data centre run by a hosting company.

Many businesses are hoping that cloud computing will be a panacea to solve all the problems that appear to come from their computer room and all those troublesome servers.

However, even if your servers are located at some third party hosting site and managed by people who don’t work for you, those pesky problems may still occur and the overall costs may be less than owning and running your own servers.

Consultants from McKinsey & Co have produced a report which shows that moving your computing to the cloud could be a costly mistake. The McKinsey study, entitled “Clearing the Air on Cloud Computing” claims that outsourcing a typical data centre to the cloud could even double costs!

The report goes on to say that businesses could do better by running their own servers and using virtualisation to run them more efficiently. This approach may indeed hold the key to greater cost savings.

We at ISN tend to agree. While neither cloud computing or virtualisation will cure all corporate IT headaches, there is a place for both and, used to fulfill definite objectives, both can provide cost savings and better performing IT for businesses.

For instance, certain tedious but crucial tasks, like spam and virus filtering can be transferred to “the cloud” in the form of Microsoft Exchange Hosted Services for an insignificant cost and can deliver quick returns in terms of increased productivity and better security.

Similarly, our LiveVault online backup solution is a cloud-based application, which creates backups off site every 15 minutes at far less cost than an in-house solution could.

The cloud is fine for utility jobs like these, but the same approach doesn’t work so well for business critical applications where tighter control, flexibility and integration with other systems are high priorities. Costs of owning hardware are low in reality since they can be depreciated over several years or even written off against tax. Most organisations are having to get leaner in the way they use IT and server virtualisation is a clear way of squeezing more value out of your data centre.

We would welcome your opinions on this topic. Please leave a comment or email us.