INDUSTRY

Isilon IQ Enables Leading Seismic Data Exchange Company to Maximize the Value of Critical Data Assets in the Highly Competitive Oil and Gas Market: Isilon Systems today announced that Seismic Exchange, Inc. (SEI) has deployed Isilon IQ as the central repository for its massive library of proprietary 3D seismic data. SEI is using Isilon IQ, powered by Isilon's OneFS operating system software, to unify more than 30,000 total square miles of 3D seismic imaging data into one seamlessly expandable pool of high-performance storage. Using Isilon IQ, SEI has dramatically accelerated the delivery of its vital stores of seismic information, providing its customers with a competitive advantage in the high-stakes race of oil and gas exploration. "Seismic data literally fuels oil and gas discovery, as it provides critical information that underpins the ability to efficiently and cost-effectively locate and extract new oil and gas reserves," said Scott Custer, Infrastructure Manager, SEI. "As a seismic data provider, we must be able to access our data sets immediately and reliably, 24x7x365, and then process it quickly and accurately to provide our customers with the highest quality information to drive their operations. With Isilon IQ, we know our data is always available and secure, enabling us to focus on growing our business and stop worrying about storage management." Prior to Isilon IQ, SEI had deployed a traditional SAN-based architecture to manage their catalog of 3D seismic data. This legacy system saddled SEI's operations with undue complexity and low data performance, slowing its geoscientist's ability to process and deliver seismic data. With the traditional SAN system, SEI's geoscientists were forced to pull large, 3D files off of the SAN, save the data to a local client, process it, and then save the new versions back to the SAN - a tedious process that created performance bottlenecks and hindered productivity. Now, by deploying Isilon IQ to unify its 3D seismic data into one, single, seamlessly expandable file system and single volume, SEI's geoscientists can access and manage the data directly on the Isilon clustered storage, enabling a dramatic increase in productivity and project turnaround. Additionally, Isilon IQ delivers consistently high data performance, allowing SEI to accurately predict project completion times to better serve their customers' needs. "As the price per barrel for oil continues to climb, the premium on quality seismic data - which is absolutely vital to successful oil and gas discovery - is rising in parallel and creating new opportunities for companies that provide this critical information," said Brett Goodwin, VP of Marketing & Business Development, Isilon Systems. "However, seismic data is only valuable if it is accurate, and deliverable on demand. SEI's success in speeding access to their data and accelerating their business operations with Isilon IQ is exemplary of how leading oil and gas companies are using clustered storage to power the next phase of global oil and gas discovery." To deliver high quality seismic data to its customers, SEI must not only store and immediately access its vast data stores on an around the clock basis, but also run a wide variety of standard seismic processing applications to correctly format the data for interpretation and use. This process requires a network of both Windows and Linux clients running data management applications concurrently to meet deadlines and deliver accurate results. By deploying Isilon IQ, which is completely interoperable with both Windows and Linux, SEI and their cross-platform integrator Network Touch, along with the Houston Information Team, created a high performance, heterogeneous computing environment which allows SEI's geoscientists to seamlessly process seismic data with no network interruptions. Powered by OneFS, Isilon IQ delivers the industry's first single file system that unifies and provides instant and ubiquitous access to the rapidly growing stores of digital content and unstructured data, eliminating the cost and complexity barriers of traditional storage architectures. OneFS is a unified operating system software layer that powers all of Isilon's award-winning IQ family of clustered storage systems including the Isilon IQ 200, 1920, 3000, 6000, Accelerator, and EX 6000. Isilon also provides a robust suite of software applications including SnapshotIQ, SmartConnect, MigrationIQ and SyncIQ that leverage OneFS and clustered storage, providing the highest levels of data protection and automated data management.