ESCAPE, a Scottish IT firm with a strong oil&gas focus, played a key role in helping Austrian energy group OMV prepare for what turned out to be a successful exploration well drilled West of Shetland a few weeks ago.
The Aberdeen company, which is expanding and hopes to have 50 or so staff by the end of next year, compared with 35 at present, was brought on board to assist with internal resilience and business continuity reviews prior to drilling the Tornado well and has since put a full resilience and data-recovery plan in place for OMV’s UK business unit.
Essentially, Escape stores OMV’s data in Aberdeen (disaster recovery) and operates the energy firm’s network from its own headquarters.
By developing replication/virtualisation technology, the company has replicated OMV’s network so that if it ever goes down, it can be up and running within an hour.
Mike Bain, a director and co-founder, told Energy the reason behind the project was mainly to do with OMV’s operational entry into the UK drilling sector. The Austrian outfit needed to ensure that if, for any reason, its London office – which is home to both UK drilling operations and OMV’s European oil&gas trading house – had IT or communication issues, it could become operational again immediately.
As a company, Escape has been operating for 10 years and has grown a significant oil&gas-related clientele, which includes names such as Premier Oil, EON Ruhrgas, Fairfield, Qserv, SBS, ISS and TSmarine. In Premier’s case, the work has involved integrating the North Sea business bought from the receivers who handled the disposal of Oilexco’s North Sea business following that group’s collapse.
Prior to that particular crunch, Escape had handled Oilexco’s IT infrastructure. The company, which expects to turn over approaching £4million in 2010, also works with a number of shipping companies and provides on-board IT support for vessels.