TGS Visualizes Data and Reduces Delivery Times Working with INT on AWS

Energy data and intelligence provider TGS wanted to innovate its energy data library by implementing data visualization capabilities and improving the delivery times of its products for its customers. To handle the demand of delivering large amounts of data, TGS wanted to use Amazon Web Services (AWS) solutions that would scale to large data requests and support advanced data visualization software.

In 2016, TGS turned to AWS Partner Interactive Network Technologies (INT) to achieve data visualization for the company by adopting its IVAAP solution. This offers a scalable, cloud-ready HTML5 enterprise visualization framework. Working on AWS, TGS greatly reduced its delivery times as well, and saved its customers an average of 4–5 hours for each transaction.

Searching for Cloud Solutions with AWS Partner INT

Since 1981, TGS has offered the oil and gas industry access to its global data libraries. These include seismic, magnetic, and gravity data, as well as multibeam and coring data, digital well logs, and associated production data. TGS also offers specialized services, such as advanced processing and analytics alongside cloud-based data applications and solutions.

Before working with AWS Partner INT, TGS didn’t have data visualization features for its customers to visualize datasets before purchasing them. TGS’s primary goal was to enhance the user experience on its data library portal so that its customers could make more informed purchase decisions.

Along with data visualization, TGS wanted to accelerate its data delivery process. “Seismic data is very large,” says Charles Nguyen, director of software development at TGS. “It could be terabytes in size, so our traditional seismic delivery has been actual tape media. Before, we would ship discs and hard drives to our customers.”

TGS decided to collaborate with INT, which has provided upstream data visualization solutions for over 30 years. TGS chose INT because it offers advanced cloud solutions that are developed specifically for the oil and gas industry.

“INT has an innovative solution for visualization, and that’s the reason we partnered with it,” says Sathiya Namasivayam, vice president of data and analytics at TGS. Additionally, both companies had extensive histories working on AWS. “The fact that both INT and TGS work well on AWS made it easier to come up with a solution together,” says Paul Schatz, vice president of sales at INT.

Adopting Amazon S3 and INT’s IVAAP Solution

To store and deliver data more efficiently, TGS adopted Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), an object storage service that offers industry-leading scalability, data availability, security, and performance. Using Amazon S3, TGS has built a data lake that stores over 28 million files from over four million wells worldwide.

This technology has allowed TGS to drastically reduce its delivery times and optimize the performance of its searches. “Amazon S3 significantly improves our download performance,” says Nguyen. TGS also created search categories based on its metadata, which makes it simpler for users to find the relevant data that they need on its energy data library.

TGS also uses versioning in Amazon S3, which lets users preserve, retrieve, and restore every version of every object stored in their buckets. Additionally, the company began using cloud-based APIs, which rapidly scale to meet the demand of delivering large datasets to customers.

On average, TGS has reduced its delivery times by 4–5 hours. For example, delivering to the Asia-Pacific region would take the company up to a week previously. Now, TGS can deliver datasets to international customers within 24 hours. “We’re faster to market because we’re able to load our data and get it into our clients’ hands more quickly using Amazon S3,” says Nguyen. “It definitely helps our sales.”

Next, the company worked alongside INT to adopt its IVAAP solution to build out data visualization features. “Using IVAAP, you can build dashboards and displays that let a user quickly see all the different types of data that might be relevant to a project,” says Schatz.

In just six months, TGS and INT were able to beta test the IVAAP solution on its energy data library. “Instead of building a solution from scratch, we were able to launch data visualization features in a third of the time using IVAAP,” says Namasivayam.

Now, TGS can provide a more enhanced user experience for its customers. “It’s important for our customers to get the right data the first time versus downloading it, reviewing it, and realizing it’s not what they want,” says Jim Burke, software development manager at TGS. Since implementing built-in data visualization features, TGS’s energy data library has become simpler for customers to navigate and find the data that they need.

Exploring Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence on AWS

With greater scalability and improved performance, TGS is looking at building out machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to continue improving the service delivery for its customers. “There are a lot of features that AWS has, such as Intelligent Tiering, that we’re exploring for future use,” says Namasivayam.

TGS also plans to continue its work with INT on AWS. “Working with INT on AWS has been great for us,” says Namasivayam. “INT has helped us display our data and showcase it to clients, and AWS is very customer focused. If we need support, AWS immediately brings the right people to the table to find a solution for us.”