BHP has selected Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft as long-term cloud providers to help improve safety, productivity, and reliability across its globally-operated assets.
The collaborations with AWS and Microsoft will support two distinct parts of BHP’s operations, it said.
AWS will power BHP’s digital transformation by providing capabilities in data analytics and machine learning to rapidly deploy digital solutions globally to improve operational performance.
Microsoft, through its Azure platform, will host BHP’s global applications portfolio. This will enable BHP to leverage its existing Microsoft licences and SAP applications portfolio and help to reduce its reliance on regional data centres, it said.
Microsoft says its multi-year strategic partnership with BHP will build on its existing Microsoft Cloud foundations with Office 365, Dynamics 365 and Azure, and will enable BHP to improve safety, productivity and sustainably at its frontline operations across Australia, the Americas and globally.
It added: “Microsoft will help deliver strong digital capability, data support and security, which will help BHP accelerate its journey to cloud, transitioning its global applications including SAP, in a portfolio move to Azure. This represents the transition of up to 17,500 TB of data to Azure.”
BHP Chief Technical Officer, Laura Tyler, said collaborating with two world-leading cloud providers highlighted the importance of cloud to support BHP’s digital transformation.
“Digital technology is in everything we do at BHP, from how we connect to our customers and partners every day to how we extract and find resources more safely and sustainably,” she said.
“We are leveraging next-generation technologies like cloud, machine learning, and data analytics to solve complex business problems and unlock value even faster.
“Cloud is the foundation to our plans, and it will enable us to deploy digital solutions to the frontline quickly and at scale. Cloud will dramatically reduce the amount of hardware on sites and reduce costs.
“We are thrilled to have AWS and Microsoft on board to ensure we have a strong foundation to accelerate our digital transformation plans and lift capability across the business.”