BP is closing its European mega data centres and migrating all data and 900 key applications currently hosted there to Amazon Web Services as part of a programme to accelerate the digitization of its infrastructure and operations.
BP is closing its European mega data centres and migrating all data and 900 key applications currently hosted there to Amazon Web Services as part of a programme to accelerate the digitization of its infrastructure and operations. In return, the energy company will power Amazon’s data centres with renewable energy.
The two European mega data centres, the largest that BP operates globally, host data from across all BP’s businesses. BP said that moving to AWS would enable it to use a broad and deep portfolio of cloud services, including machine learning, analytics, storage, security, databases, and compute to gain greater insights and automate processes.
BP has already migrated approx. half of its 65 ‘business critical’ SAP production environments to AWS, which it said has improved system performance and integrity.
In addition, BP is creating a ‘data lake’ on Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), for use across its businesses, and will use Amazon Kinesis, a service that enables organizations to easily collect, process, and analyse real-time, streaming data, to gain timely insights for its emissions monitoring operations. With this information and leveraging Amazon SageMaker, a machine learning (ML) service that provides organizations with the ability to build, train, and deploy ML models quickly, BP said that it will be able to make predictions that will help it make faster business decisions and drive efficiencies.
BP CIO Steve Fortune, said: ‘Exiting our European data centres and migrating to AWS supports our digital transformation agenda, and we’re excited about the possibilities for increased flexibility, operational efficiencies, and opportunities to innovate while helping to advance the energy transition.’
Meanwhile, BP has struck a deal with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to supply renewable energy to the European data centres that drive the AWS cloud platform.
Starting in 2021, BP will begin supplying AWS with renewable energy from more than 170 megawatts (MW) of wind and solar projects in Sweden and Spain – enough renewable energy each year to supply more 125,000 European homes. The expectation is to grow this relationship to more than double the capacity in excess of 400 MW, said BP.
In the first project, BP will provide AWS with 122 MW of new renewable power capacity from one of the largest onshore windfarms being built in Europe, in Västernorrland, Sweden from 2022. A new solar farm in Spain will deliver 50 MW to AWS from 2021.
Robert Lawson, chief operating officer for Global Gas at BP Supply and Trading, said: ‘BP and AWS are both targeting reductions in emissions from their respective operations. One way BP can play an important role in helping our customers is by using our trading capability and scale to deliver innovative, reliable and flexible supplies of low-carbon and renewable power to major corporate customers and partners.’
BP said it is targeting other big companies for renewable energy power purchase agreements (PPAs).
