Halliburton Unit Uses Cloud-Hosting Solution

to Eliminate IT Costs for Engineering Schools

“By hosting DecisionSpace Well Engineering software

on Windows Azure, we saved the IT department from
Customer: Halliburton
Website: www.halliburton.com the ordeal of dedicating resources to deploy it on
Customer Size: 75,000 employees
Country or Region: United States
50 machines just before the start of the semester.”
Industry: Oil and gas Robello Samuel, Halliburton Fellow, Halliburton

Customer Profile
Halliburton already awarded no-cost academic licenses for its
Halliburton, headquartered in Houston
and Dubai, is one of the world’s largest engineering software—but wanted to make it even easier for its
providers of products and services to the
academic partners to use it. That’s why it’s hosting the software
energy industry. Its Landmark Software
and Services subsidiary provides on Windows Azure, eliminating the schools’ costs for on-
advanced solutions for the complete
premises installation, maintenance, and license management.
exploration and production of oil and gas
reserves. The schools gain flexibility to add or move classes, and students
can use the software on their own PCs and tablets.
Software and Services
 Windows Azure platform
− Windows Azure
Business Needs and Landmark grants no-cost licenses to
College students seeking to enter highly its academic partners to help them do so.
− Windows Azure Virtual Machines
technical professions need to learn the But the schools’ IT departments still have
 Microsoft Server System Portfolio
latest technologies. But the requirements to download and install the software on
− Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2
of installing, configuring, managing, and powerful workstations (which they must
updating software toolkits that offer those buy or redeploy from other uses), and then
technologies can be a sizable burden for manage both the software and the
university IT departments, which are often licenses, consuming valuable IT time and
stretched thinner than their corporate money. Students, meanwhile, can only use
counterparts. What’s a university to do? the software where it is installed, rather
than having it available to them in their
That is a particular question for the dorm rooms, libraries, or other locations.
Landmark Software and Services subsidiary When courses are over, the IT departments
of Halliburton. Landmark’s popular, high- have to uninstall the software.
end solution for the complex task of
designing and engineering oil wells— All these factors add to the time, cost, and
DecisionSpace® Well Engineering effort required for engineering schools and
For more information about other
software—is just such a technology. their students to use the software, keeping
Microsoft customer successes, please visit:
Engineering schools want to introduce them from using it as freely as they might
www.microsoft.com/casestudies
DecisionSpace software to their students, wish. Landmark wanted to remove these
impediments in order to make the software Landmark piloted its cloud-based strategy Landmark also got a great deal for itself.
more widely available to them. in the fall of 2013 at the University of Hems estimates that the company reduced
Houston engineering school. The project potential hosting costs by 50 percent,
Solution supported 50 students in two drilling compared with likely on-demand costs
Landmark developed a deployment strategy classes and ran smoothly. A subsequent from another cloud services provider.
to make the use of DecisionSpace software deployment to a class of 150 students at
relatively effortless for college IT Pandit Deendayal Petroleum University in Supports Worldwide Scalability
departments and their students and to give India was equally successful. The company The University of Houston engineering
the company a standardized, repeatable now plans to offer DecisionSpace Well school also gained more flexibility in using
way to make the software accessible to Engineering software as a cloud-based DecisionSpace Well Engineering software.
educational institutions anywhere. service to other institutions. It gained the ability to move classes from
one room to another without having to
The key to this strategy was migrating from Benefits uninstall and reinstall software. And it
on-premises deployment to deployment in Landmark succeeded in virtually could easily add a class if registration
the cloud. By migrating to the cloud, college eliminating traditional time and resource warranted it, without scrambling at the last
IT departments wouldn’t be responsible for requirements for DecisionSpace Well minute to complete another classroom
hardware or software, yet students could Engineering software deployments. It deployment.
access DecisionSpace software from any increased scalability for both its academic
authorized location. The company chose the partner and itself. And it provided easier “For our academic partners, the flexibility
Windows Azure platform. and faster access to the DecisionSpace that we can offer with DecisionSpace
software. software on Windows Azure Virtual
“DecisionSpace Well Engineering software is Machines is a benefit you can’t put a price
built on Microsoft technology from end to Speeds Deployment on,” says Samuel. “Technology is no longer
end,” says Adam Hems, Cloud Strategist at Instead of the days or weeks typically a limitation to how they choose to use it in
Landmark Software and Services. “Windows required for university IT departments to their curricula.”
Azure gave us all the features and security complete on-premises deployments of
we needed, so it made sense to stick with DecisionSpace Well Engineering software, That flexibility will likely prove a great
technology that was already working for us, the University of Houston’s IT department benefit to Landmark, because it can now
using the Windows Azure corporate spent virtually no time supporting the expand the service to support other
subscription we already owned.” cloud-based service. The only requirement schools simply by adding virtual machines.
was that it provide the range of IP The company can now also consider
To keep things simple, Landmark created a addresses to receive authorized access to offering DecisionSpace cloud-hosting as a
Windows Azure Virtual Machine for each the solution. service to enterprise customers.
student. Each virtual machine contained an
instance of DecisionSpace Well Engineering “By hosting DecisionSpace Well Provides More Flexible Use
software and a database running on Engineering software on Windows Azure, Students benefited too, of course, by
Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 software. we saved the IT department from the being able to access the software
Students would access their virtual ordeal of dedicating resources to deploy it whenever and wherever (on campus) they
machines through any client with a remote on 50 machines just before the start of the wanted it. That eliminated the need for
desktop connection, such as campus PCs or semester, when the demands on the IT trips to the classroom just to work on
their own PCs or tablets. department are the greatest,” says Robello assignments. For the first time, students
Samuel, a Halliburton Fellow and the could use the software on their own PCs
For security, Landmark configured the professor for the classes that used the and tablets, alone or in ad hoc study
solution to accept IP addresses only from cloud-hosted software. “For the first time, groups in dorms or elsewhere.
itself and its academic partners, so students and without any significant investment on
would need to be on their school networks its part, the school provided its students “We’re able to give students a better, fuller
(a WiFi connection sufficed) or have VPN with the current version of state-of-the-art experience with DecisionSpace Well
connections to them. The final element of software.” Engineering software by hosting it on
the solution was a licensing server, which Windows Azure,” says Samuel. “That’s
also is hosted on a Windows Azure Virtual By using Windows Azure through its probably the biggest benefit of all.”
Machine. Enterprise Agreement with Microsoft,

This case study is for informational purposes only.

MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.

Document published January 2014