Data#3 wins major mining account to its cloud

A ray of light for IT integrators today amid stories of slowing investment in Australia's mining sector, with Data#3 scoring a major project win.

Data#3 today announced the project, in which it will provide infrastructure-as-a-service to oil and gas project engineering firm WorleyParsons.

The project will support WorleyParsons use of Bentley Project Wise, a collaborative engineering application. The system will allow WorleyParsons and its client to logon simultaneously and change engineering specifications.

The win is "very, very significant" for Data#3, said managing director John Grant. He said the stop/start nature of mining projects is proving to be a natural fit for cloud services.

"If Worley made decision to take all their software to the cloud it would be a huge job," Grant said. "The decision they've made is they'll take this one application for this one project into the cloud."

The win builds on a reputation Data#3 started building in the mining industry when it won its first "as a service" client, the multi-billion dollar Alpha Coal Project in Queensland.

Data#3 now has "a lot" of clients in mining and resourses area, according to Grant.

"The nature of the workload is that it's sporadic, lots of period of very high use and lots of periods of very low use…engineering and resources organisations have that in spades."

WorleyParsons is a resource and energy company with business in water and mining infrastructure as well as other sectors across various continents. The company recently announced a $65 million contract to construct a greenfield fractionation facility near Alberta Canada, as well a $92 million North Sea engineering contract. Grant couldn't name WorleyParsons' client for the Data#3 project.

Grant says businesses are moving more slowly to the cloud than people imagine.

"The reality is that people still have very, very large chunks of their systems on premise or in systems that they've outsourced to someone."

"Customers just aren't buying as fast as people think they are or would like them to. If you look at everyone's cloud, it's underutilised," Grant said.