Kuwait’s KNPC refines its digital transformation with VMware

Kuwait’s KNPC refines its digital transformation with VMware

With Kuwait’s national Vision 2035 calling for increased productivity across all sectors, it’s vital that the oil industry, which has been the economy’s foundation for decades, modernises as well, allowing it to reach maximum efficiency and support diversification initiatives. “In Kuwait’s oil and gas sector, opportunities for new projects appear quickly and require sophisticated IT resources, with a rapid turnaround and the ability to develop powerful customised applications,” said Naji Al-Marri, manager, information technology, Kuwait National Petroleum Company (KNPC). He added that KNPC is already working on several megaprojects, including a strategic plan to expand and improve the Mina Abdullah and Mina Al-Ahmadi refineries into a single integrated complex with an 800,000 BPD capacity. Additional initiatives include a sulphur handing project and a fifth gas train. To support these ambitious plans, KNPC deployed its own private cloud in two data centres in Kuwait, with a Software-Defined Datacentre (SDDC) approach, built on VMware solutions, virtualising compute, storage, network and security layers for maximum agility, in addition to reduced cost and complexity. Furthermore, KNPC’s IT team operates both sites in Active-Active configuration, allowing them to provide high resiliency and Service Level Agreements to the business units. “By embracing a cloud-first approach with