Landmark Graphics saw an opportunity. While the company continually launched new products to offer its clients an increasingly integrated platform, there was a growing sense of unease amongst the ranks that there was more it could do.

Concurrently, IBM and Intel, two companies that know a thing or two about computers and information technology, saw a need in the energy sector for the adoption of some of the latest compute capabilities and were looking for a partner to help them promote what they had to offer.

The three companies believed the time was right for this industry to look again at its computing infrastructures; specifically the traditional tired business model of client-server computing. Price points have been coming down, performance gains from the new high-performance server architectures are impressive, and bandwidth is not a limiting factor for certain workflows, opening the doors to an array of opportunities for companies looking to rethink their technology foundation.

The resulting agreement was announced earlier this year at the European Association of Geoscientists and Engineers (EAGE) annual meeting in Paris. Initially the primary offering is "on-demand computing," in which Landmark will access IBM's Deep Computing Capacity On Demand supercomputing centers for its seismic processing services, including a newly opened center in Houston. But on-demand computing is only one of many intriguing offerings that the oil and gas industry is just now starting to recognize.
It's a good start. "This offering goes to the heart of many of our customers' needs by supplying computing technology as required, without large up-front capital investments," Peter Bernard, Landmark's president, said. "With IBM On Demand technology, Landmark's seismic processing customers will now be able to access and pay for computing power only as needed."

The concept lends itself particularly well to compute heavy processes such as seismic processing or reservoir simulation, in which a huge amount of compute capacity can often be required, but only for a few weeks at a time. A company that needs 2,000 dedicated processors for 8 weeks should not have to purchase those processors, the logic goes. Rather, the client can "rent" the processors for the time needed. This will be particularly helpful for smaller clients who may have large processing needs but can't afford to invest in the technology needed to meet those needs.

It's rather like having access to an automated teller machine when you need money rather than having to own the entire bank.

Landmark officials believe that this service will be the tip of the iceberg in terms of what IBM and Intel can bring to the oil and gas industry. IBM, for instance, has received 27,000 patents in less than a decade. Both companies spend millions of dollars a year on research and development. They can afford to because, unlike a company like Landmark that offers products that target a specific industry, IBM and Intel are tapped into the consumer market. The ability to leverage that market can, in turn, pay dividends as the technology is customized to find and extract hydrocarbons.

What goodies can our industry anticipate? Here are a few examples:

• IBM is developing the Blue Gene/L supercomputer which, at a fraction of the size of existing machines, will offer dramatic reductions in power consumption, cost and space requirements for businesses needing immense computing power. Small-scale prototypes of the system already rank among the world's top 10 most powerful supercomputers.
• Intel has equipped National Semiconductor with mobile workstations for its product designers. This has led to increased collaboration, improved productivity due to their ability to take their work with them, reduction of design cycle times, and improved workflow and profitability.
• IBM's Computational Biology Center is studying how computers can manage, analyze and simulate the complex structures and processes inherent in living systems. It draws upon work in pattern recognition, simulation science, databases, and statistics and information theory.
• Intel provided British Gas utilities engineers with mobile laptops that convert to tablets equipped with built-in wireless capabilities. The result is an astonishing 250% increase in their ability to respond to service calls with the same amount of staff.

Will geophysicists someday have a wristwatch with Web-enabled 3-D visualization capabilities on which they can conduct their seismic interpretations, conference in their colleagues (or order out for pizza) and check the latest headlines? Perhaps Rolex is looking for an alliance opportunity...

For more information about Landmark, visit www.lgc.com. For information about IBM, visit www.ibm.com.
For more information about Intel, visit www.intel.com.

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