Top oil & gas firm Royal Dutch Shell, accelerates software development to fuel global energy production

To support the world’s expanding economies and populations, energy companies like Royal Dutch Shell continuously look for new ways to keep up with a growing demand for dwindling resources.

Searching for new solutions

On a mission to be the most competitive, innovative energy company in the world, Shell relies on the latest technology to support global processes, including the production of more than 3 million barrels of crude oil equivalent each day. The days of easy oil and gas exploration and drilling are over, eclipsed by a new focus on technologies that help locate energy sources deep underground or beneath the sea. Today, seismic imaging technologies that seemed futuristic even a decade ago are now the norm.

To meet the world’s growing energy demand, Shell’s software development team works tirelessly to keep its specialized software up to date and enhanced with new features. “From a software development perspective, we were noticing trends like the need for more external collaboration,” says Henk Middendorp, Software Engineering Architect at Royal Dutch Shell. “We were also moving toward continuous delivery to serve customers who want solutions quicker.”

The development team’s IT tooling is guided by Johan Krebbers, the company’s IT Chief Technology Officer. “Technology is a very important component of innovation,” he says. “We have a very large investment in R&D, most of which targets software solutions for oil and gas exploration. It’s really important for a company like Shell, and it’s very important for your future as a consumer as well.”

Collaboration is key, but disparate locations and technologies can hinder productivity. Shell works extensively with outside vendors, and provisioning access to corporate network accounts can take months. The company wanted a more streamlined, centralized solution to support application development. Lisa Thomas, Senior Software Developer at Royal Dutch Shell, says “The software requires a lot of fine-tuning, and it’s a very busy job because users request a lot of features and I’m constantly working on trying to deliver them.”

Collaborating in the cloud

Shell looked at upgrading its existing on-premises Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server environment. But keeping software and servers up to date has become an expensive hassle, a serious consideration in an industry facing low oil prices and escalating production costs. The company decided that deploying its collaboration environment in the cloud was a better choice. “Software as a service, or SaaS, is our focus now,” says Krebbers. “With SaaS solutions, you gain speed-of-change. Moving to the cloud is the overall Shell strategy to obtain a much more agile, fast-moving environment than we could with an on-premises space.”

As part of its new strategy, Shell decided to migrate its Visual Studio Team Foundation Server projects to Visual Studio Team Services on Microsoft Azure. Team Services provides cloud collaboration tools that work with existing integrated development environments or editors. As a result, Shell’s developers can store and collaborate on code using their favorite tools and languages from virtually anywhere in the world. The company also chose Azure Active Directory to simplify identity management for vendors and employees. With Azure Active Directory, the company provides fast, highly secure access to external vendors, cutting onboarding time from months to less than a week.

The solution will eliminate the pain and cost that would be associated with maintaining and upgrading infrastructure, and, as a bonus, new features are available every three weeks. Geo-redundant Azure data centers also ensure 24/7 availability for global developers.

The transition made sound business sense, but the development team still needed to be convinced. Thomas was initially skeptical about the project but soon changed her mind. “I was unenthused when I heard we had to move to Team Services,” she says. “Any change is hard, and we work in really rapid development cycles. However, the transition to the cloud was absolutely painless, and within 24 hours we were online and back in action.”

Providing cross-platform support and reducing IT costs

Enthusiasm grew even further with the evolution of a more agile DevOps approach to development. Now, everyone—including geophysicists, software engineers, QA specialists, and external vendors—can work together on the same project from virtually any location. Equally important, the new collaboration environment provides broad support for a diverse array of technologies. “We jokingly say that if there’s a product out there, it’s used somewhere within Shell, although we try to standardize on platforms like Windows and Linux, as well as iOS and Android for mobile development,” says Middendorp. “Most of those platforms require us to support a whole raft of technologies, so the cross-platform functionality in Visual Studio Team Services makes it a very logical choice for us.”

Migration to the cloud is nearly complete, and the new, nimble environment is already helping Shell reduce the cost and complexity of IT management. “Our support organization will get a lot smaller once we decommission our on-premises installations,” says Middendorp. “That’s an immediate cost benefit.”

Transforming Shell’s technology environment

Now, Shell’s developers can focus on creating the next generation of technology to meet the world’s energy needs, whether it’s a new reservoir modeling simulation, a better engineering solution, or innovative mobile apps for consumers. “Instead of telling people to wait for six months for a new feature, we can give it to them in a few weeks,” says Krebbers. “Our lead cycles are getting much shorter, and we have business stakeholders involved so that our solutions are more aligned with business requirements.”

Within a year, Shell has transformed its technology environment, a change that it credits to close collaboration with Microsoft. “We’re all working in the cloud, so everyone has central access to the platform, including Microsoft’s engineers,” says Middendorp. “They can troubleshoot much more quickly than when we had an on-premises solution. So again, the cloud is very much the oil that makes everything work.”

The transition to the cloud was absolutely painless, and within 24 hours we were online and back in action.|Instead of telling people to wait for six months for a new feature, we can give it to them in a few weeks. Our lead cycles are getting much shorter, and we have business stakeholders involved so that our solutions are more aligned with business requirements.|We jokingly say that if there’s a product out there, it’s used somewhere within Shell…. Most of those platforms require us to support a whole raft of technologies, so the cross-platform functionality in Visual Studio Team Services makes it a very logical choice for us.