Chevron signs seven-year deal with Microsoft Azure

California-based Chevron has announced that it has signed a seven-year deal with Microsoft that will see the technology company’s Azure platform established as Chevron’s primary cloud provider, part of the energy giant’s wider digital transformation strategy.

Chevron aims to utilise the partnership with Microsoft in order to more readily incorporate advanced technologies into its operations, including big data analytics and the internet of things (IoT), as a way of improving its performance.

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“We embrace every opportunity that streamlines our workflows, gives us insights into more efficient operations and helps us compete,” said Joe Geagea, Chevron’s Executive Vice President of Technology, Projects and Services.

“We already have a head start in digitizing our oilfields, but we want to accelerate our deployment of new technologies that position us to increase our revenues, lower our costs, and improve the safety and reliability of our operations.”

Using Microsoft Azure, Chevron will be able to streamline its IT operations, whilst also evolving it from a support system to one that drives the company’s digitisation, optimising its marketing, production, management, exploration and logistics operations.

The partnership will also benefit Microsoft in the fact that it will facilitate joint innovation, not only from a technological perspective, but also from a business one. Microsoft will be able to use the partnership to identify potential future products of interests, as well as how Microsoft solutions can be utilised in different ways.

“With Chevron and Microsoft, intelligent energy meets intelligent cloud,” said Jason Zander, corporate vice president of Microsoft Azure.

“Our global cloud infrastructure – which has more regions around the world than any other cloud provider – will enable Chevron to leverage our capabilities across areas like high-performance computing and Internet of Things to become a truly digital business.”

The announcement is the latest string of positive news for Microsoft Azure, having announced a 93% growth in sales in its latest quarterly results this week.