Developer Says NT is a Gas for BP

by Glenn Mulcaster
The Age, Computer Age, Tuesday 12th August 1997

Developer Says NT is a Gas for BP.

DEVELOPERS at Microsoft's Tech.Ed 97 conference in Melbourne last week heard that one of the biggest tasks in implementing a Windows NT-based system for fuel depots was not the software deployment but convincing management that NT could replace a proprietary Unix system in a mission-critical task.

Lloyd Borrett, marketing manager for Melbourne's Expert Software Services, presented a BP Australia case study to the Microsoft conference, which attracted about 1300 delegates. Microsoft claims Tech.Ed 97 is Australia's biggest annual IT conferences.

Expert has worked as a software developer for BP for some years on its mainframe and client/server systems. BP, which outsources its IT operations, appointed Expert as its software services partner early last year. Other contractors include Telstra which manages data communications and Unisys, which oversees desktop systems.

The Yard Automation system upgrade described at Tech.Ed 97 related to the automation of truck yards where fuel tankers are loaded. It required special interfaces to security card systems in the loading bays, plus connections to legacy databases and printers on MVS and Unix hosts.

Greg Beilby, a business development team manager with BP, said the old systems were Unix-based machines, difficult to manage, and costly to maintain. Between $20,000 and $60,000 was spent each year on supporting each Unix system. "The development for the new system cost $150,000 and that included a lot of risk analysis," he said.

"There was a lot of resistance to move away from Unix because in New South Wales alone if we cannot deliver fuel, it costs $1 million a day." He said the marketing team at BP had to be convinced that an NT-based solution could offer a dependable yard automation system. Beilby said the new system also offered flexible reporting functions which helped cut annual printing costs from about $500,000 to $50,000.

"There were a lot of NT-based file servers in BP before," Borrett said. "But this was mission critical, with an importance on fault tolerance and real-time performance. It was not in a typical office situation, these were in facilities not normally associated with computers. Also, the industry standard was on Unix."

Borrett said Expert, which does not sell or install hardware, was happy to work on any platform but NT was right for this particular project.

He said other oil companies and other overseas arms of BP were looking to deploy a similar yard automation system. "They are talking to BP because they own the intellectual property on this system," he said. "We just designed, developed, wrote and support the solution."

"Not that it's that simple," said Borrett. "It's our controlled development environment, advanced methodologies and team of highly skilled professionals that makes it possible to produce such leading edge solutions."

Borrett said his firm, a Microsoft Solutions Provider, employed 35 software developers and was actively recruiting another 7 analyst programmers.

"We also expect to hire four or five graduates to join our Graduate Training Programme early next year," Borrett said. "Our growth in the past few years may make us look like a volcano company but we have only taken on work when we've had staff and expertise to handle it."

Expert, which offers services for mainframe, Unix and AS/400 as well NT-based IT shops, prefers to train its analyst programmers in its own image. "We don't always find the people with the exact skill sets that we need," Borrett said. "So we look for those with the right attitude and train them."