Shell drives industry transformation and innovation with Microsoft

Shell Global Solutions is broadening its work with Microsoft Corp. to help accelerate industry transformation and innovation. Through this collaboration, Shell will increase efficiencies across the company from drilling and extraction to employee empowerment and collaboration, as well as safety for its retail customers and employees.

Shell has also selected C3 IoT with Microsoft Azure as its artificial intelligence (AI) platform to enable and accelerate digital transformation on a global scale. Shell expects to realize substantial economic value by rapidly scaling and replicating AI and machine learning applications across its upstream and downstream businesses and improving operational performance.

The collaboration with Microsoft gives Shell a solid digital platform to make its core business more effective and efficient and supports its ambition to provide more and cleaner energy solutions through technology, said Yuri Sebregts, executive vice president for technology and CTO of Shell.

The combination of C3 IoT and Azure for the Shell AI Platform will enable Shell to rapidly realize the vision of digital transformation across all lines of business, including upstream, midstream, retail, and finance, said Thomas M. Siebel, chairman and CEO of C3 IoT.

Shell’s wide-scale adoption of AI, machine learning and IoT technologies provides an example of how digital transformation can help the industry address resource challenges, improve asset performance, and promote safety, added  Judson Althoff, executive vice president of Microsoft’s Worldwide Commercial Business.

Leveraging the C3 IoT Platform on Microsoft Azure for a broad set of AI applications, Shell will start with predictive maintenance for hundreds of thousands of critical assets globally. It will then expand to support other machine learning, machine vision and natural language processing-based use cases.

Shell’s has made progress in two key areas of the business already with artificial intelligence tools. Shell Geodesic was developed to improve the accuracy and consistency of a horizontal well’s directional control to reach the most productive layers of rock containing oil and gas. The solution streamlines drilling data and processes algorithms that make real-time decisions and better predict their outcomes. And, to ensure the safety of employees and customers at its retail sites, Shell developed a new cloud-based, deep learning solution built on Microsoft Azure that uses closed-circuit camera footage and Internet of Things technology to automatically identify safety hazards and alert employees, so they can quickly respond and eliminate potential problems.

Furthermore, to foster more social, seamless and integrated digital experiences for its workforce of over 84,000 global employees, Shell will leverage three integrated Office 365 communication apps, Microsoft Stream, an enterprise video service; SharePoint Online, a content collaboration repository; and Yammer, a corporate social network, to modernize its communication channels. This will allow for a streamlined capability to communicate with employees in a more personalized and collaborative way, growing thriving internal communities.

For more information, go to www.shell.com.

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