The Open Group launches the Open Subsurface Data Universe Forum

SAN FRANCISCO -- The Open Group, the vendor-neutral technology consortium, has announced the launch of the Open Subsurface Data Universe (OSDU) Forum, a Forum of The Open Group. This Forum will be focused on developing a standard data platform - initially for the oil and gas industry - that will bring together exploration, development, and wells data.

The OSDU data platform will enable secure, reliable, global, and performant access to all subsurface data. This will accelerate the deployment of emerging digital solutions to support better decision-making. It will result in faster delivery of capabilities and reduce the implementation and lifecycle costs across the subsurface community.

Formed towards the end of 2018 by several leading oil and gas operators, the OSDU Forum promotes and utilizes technology standards, new digital technologies, and best business practices to address the business and technical issues related to subsurface data. The platform will create an open, standards-based ecosystem in which suppliers compete with each other to provide the best applications and services. This will deliver flexibility to the customers, who will be able to select the best of breed services, and further differentiate themselves by developing proprietary applications on top of the OSDU data platform.

“We are excited to announce the launch of The Open Group Open Subsurface Data Universe Forum,” said Steve Nunn, president and CEO of The Open Group. “As more organizations join this new Forum, including operators, suppliers, and academic institutions, we are set to make significant headway in solving real business problems through the creation and promotion of technology standards. By using new digital technologies and business best practices, we can transform the way the industry stores, shares, and analyzes subsurface data.”

There are currently over 35 operators and suppliers actively participating as member organizations of the OSDU Forum, including Equinor and Shell as two of the founding members and supplier organizations such as Bluware.

Harald Laastad, V.P. and program lead subsurface analytics, Equinor said, “It is our belief that the foundation of a digital energy company is to make data available to our users at any time and place. The OSDU Forum supports this ambition by enabling standardized access to subsurface data, separating lifecycle data management from the applications enabling innovation and creative use of subsurface data.”

While Johan Krebbers, general manager digital emerging technologies/V.P. IT Innovation at Shell added, “Having worked with The Open Group to launch the OSDU Forum and contributed several of our own developments, Shell is very pleased with the acceptance in the market to date. We believe in putting data at the center as an industry, and that offering a broad API-driven platform for application development is crucial to support organizations in this sector.”

Bluware has recently donated its OpenVDS software to the Forum and Dan Piette, CEO of Bluware commented, “The OSDU Forum strategically aligns with Bluware's mission to create and deliver technology enabling true workflow efficiency and collaboration on large geophysical datasets. We are excited to work alongside other advocates who are embracing the next wave of computing capabilities and Open Source frameworks in the oil and gas industry. It's an exhilarating time to be a member of the OSDU community - we are literally setting the stage for an industry-wide, digital transformation movement that will fundamentally change how E&P Operators evaluate and leverage data and information,”.