BP to shutter mega European data centres in preference for AWS

The move is part of a broad programme to speed up the digitisation of BP's operations and infrastructure

Amazon Web Services (AWS) said yesterday that energy firm British Petroleum (BP) will soon close its European data centres and migrate all data and key applications over to AWS.

The move is part of BP's wider programme to speed up the digitisation of its operations and infrastructure and to expand its already close relationship with AWS. After the move BP will be able to use AWS's cloud services, including analytics, security, storage, databases and machine learning.

According to AWS, BP will shut down its two European mega-centres, which currently host the data and more than 900 key applications for the company, and shift the contents to AWS.

As part of the move, BP will also create a new data lake on Amazon S3. It will use the Amazon Kinesis service, which enables organisations to collect and analyse real-time streaming data for emissions monitoring and petrol station pump operations.

BP will also accelerate the migration of its SAP applications to AWS. AWS already runs more than 30 of BP's 65 SAP applications.

BP's refineries currently use AVEVA Unified Supply Chain software, a decision-making analytics platform, on AWS.

"We've been working with AWS for many years, and today's announcements further strengthen that relationship," said Steve Fortune, CIO at BP.

"AWS is helping BP to transform our operations, and together we are using the cloud and renewable energy resources to drive energy efficiencies."

Bill Vass, VP Technology, Storage, Automation and Management at AWS, commented: "We are pleased to expand our relationship with BP as the company moves its largest mega data centres, which host mission-critical data applications, to AWS."

In a separate announcement, BP said it will provide over 170MW of renewable energy annually to data centres in Sweden and Spain that drive the AWS cloud platform.

For the first project, BP will supply 122MW of renewable power to AWS from one of the onshore wind farms it is building in Vasternorrland, Sweden. That wind farm is expected to commence operations in 2022.

A solar farm in Spain, which will deliver 50 MW to AWS data centre, is expected to start operations in 2021.