Chevron Taps Microsoft As Its Cloud Provider

American energy corporation Chevron announced Monday (Oct. 30) it had entered into a seven-year partnership with Redmond, Washington-based technology company Microsoft Corp., through which Microsoft has become Chevron’s primary cloud provider.

In a press release published by Business Wire, Chevron said choosing Microsoft as its cloud technology and cloud storage provider would accelerate the application of advanced technologies — including analytics and the Internet of Things (IoT) — to drive performance and improve efficiencies.

“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, in the press release announcing the arrangement. “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.”

The energy company reported the strategic partnership with Microsoft is part of its overall digitization initiative. The multi-year effort will streamline information technology (IT) operations around a digital core, connecting Chevron’s engineers and operations through analytics and increased automation. Adoption of Microsoft’s Azure platform will allow the company’s IT workforce to evolve from supporting infrastructure to one enabling more advanced technologies, the press release noted. It will also help Chevron optimize exploration, reservoir management, production operations, midstream logistics and marketing operations.

The strategic partnership also extends to a broader technical collaboration that will allow the two companies to focus on joint innovation from a cloud technology and business process perspective, the press release noted.

“With Chevron and Microsoft, intelligent energy meets intelligent cloud,” said Jason Zander, corporate vice president of Microsoft Azure. “Our global cloud infrastructure … will enable Chevron to leverage our capabilities across areas like high-performance computing and Internet of Things to become a truly digital business.”