Head of Sales, Tietoevry Tech Services Norway
The challenge
First and foremost, Aibel needed a trusted partner to modernize, renew, and standardize the company’s technology platform. Also, the company needed a partner that can help to start moving into the cloud and then accelerate the cloud adoption to improve operational efficiency and employee collaboration. Critical requirements were to perform the migration project at a competitive price and with low risk.
The solution
Aibel’s complete IT infrastructure, including application and database operations, data management, storage services, networking, end-user services, operation of branch offices, and Microsoft 365 were migrated to a new hybrid cloud environment in Tietoevry’s new data centre in Fet, Norway, equipped with world-leading technology.
Learn all about our cloud servicesAbout the customer
Aibel is a leading service company within the oil, gas, and offshore wind industries that provide its customers with optimal and innovative solutions within engineering, construction, modifications, and maintenance throughout a project's entire life cycle.
Aibel builds and maintains critical infrastructure for energy companies and holds a leading position in electrification of offshore oil and gas installations and onshore processing plants and is a significant supplier to the European offshore wind industry.
Read more about AibelKey benefits for Aibel
Business operations’ flexible backbone
Flexible, scalable, and top-notch IT infrastructure ensures smooth and stable business operations.
Excellent catering for the next steps
The hybrid cloud environment enables Aibel to continue the transformation with much easier deployments of anything new.
Effective collaboration
Modern digital services and tools ensure effective collaboration and the ability to innovate new solutions improving both employee and customer happiness.
Flexible and stable IT services are a must for Aibel in fierce global competition
Aibel builds and maintains massive constructions for oil, gas, and offshore wind industries. It has eight branch offices in Norway, Thailand, and Singapore, among them two large yards. Aibel’s business is experiencing the global energy transformation, and about a half of its contracts in the backlog concern renewable energy.
As a project-oriented business, Aibel needs to hire a lot of people to execute the projects it wins, which makes it crucial to have flexible IT solutions and a cost model that follows the company’s business volumes. Aibel faces fierce global competition in its industry, making it very important to ensure reasonable market pricing of IT services. The value of customer contracts is huge, and their stable delivery requires an infrastructure and applications that function without downtime around the clock across regions.
Since IT is far from the core business, Aibel does not provide any infrastructure themselves. Instead, the company tries to purchase as much as possible as a service to avoid bothering with management and the need to invest in new equipment. Therefore, Aibel has had a cohesive IT services contract with Tietoevry and its predecessors since 2012. Ahead of the modernization project, the contract was renewed after a tender that Tietoevry won convincingly, especially thanks to its capability to ensure a low-risk transition and its local presence. The contract spans five years, and it can be extended annually going forward.
A trusted partner ensured a smooth transition
Tietoevry migrated Aibel’s infrastructure and services very efficiently and smoothly, fulfilling the agreed timeline and quality, making it one of the most successful projects done in Norway. The project started in the fall of 2021, and full production in the new environment started in the spring of 2022. Minor delays occurred but they were agreed upon by the joint steering group and were not caused by the project.
In practical terms, the project proceeded in several steps where servers were moved to the new hybrid platform, including all data centre operations, data storage, data management, data backups, all networks, the service desk, end-user services, and help desk services. All branch offices were transferred to the new environment in a few waves. The service setup is the same as earlier with some customizations.
Vital in the successful implementation of the new contract was the contribution of Aibel, its readiness to use its own resources more than was expected initially, and its positive push to meet expectations. An essential enabler for success was the good, effective, and informal nature of communications and collaboration based on the long partnership. Key success factors were the dedication of skilful people to work hard to reach a common goal and having the top management anchored to the project.
A strong foundation for the future
Now, having a new infrastructure with a high degree of scalability and security, Aibel has a firm foundation for growth. It is ready to deepen its IT transformation by utilizing the potential of modern cloud solutions to introduce new innovations. For instance, the new infrastructure provides sufficient scalability and flexibility in the volume and consumption of services, making it fast to add in hundreds of new end-users working with a new customer project.
Together with Tietoevry, the company is planning how to continue the transformation journey and looking at different improvements within all service areas. The first steps will likely include moving Aibel’s Oracle database to the cloud, which will be a huge project. Among other areas requiring work are increasing public cloud adoption, and modernizing the client management solutions, applications, and applications management.
Having IT operations in a hybrid cloud data centre equipped with environmentally friendly technology also increases Aibel’s sustainability in a business that is moving towards renewable energy solutions. The company sees exciting times ahead on a journey powered by Tietoevry’s services and expertise proven to be top-notch.
Images: all images in this success story depicts, and are owned by, Aibel.