World’s largest oil producer optimistic on WiFi & WiMax growth prospects
Saudi Aramco has installed 700 access points in its network across the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to enable the use of wireless technologies such as WiFi and in one case WiMax. These access points have been deployed in the company’s refineries, medical centres, and education and training campuses, to name just a few. Nabil Khalid Al-Dabal, Manager of Communications Engineering & Technical Support Department at Saudi Aramco, gave Pipeline Magazine’s Ram Sahgal the lowdown on the implementation of wireless technologies at his company’s facilities. Al-Dabal presented a paper entitled Successes and Pitfalls of WiFi/WiMax Technology: A Saudi Aramco Experience at the Middle East Smartphone & Wireless Summit held in Dubai last year.
Saudi Aramco has implemented WiFi technology at a number of its medical facilities, airports, housing complexes and a major refinery across the Kingdom. Can you tell me more about the use of this technology in the refinery and how many hotspots have been installed in the area?
In September 2004, Saudi Aramco completed the implementation of WiFi technology in one of its biggest refineries, Ras Tanura, with 25 hotspots, thereby adding value to our business because this gives our operators and our engineers the ability and the mobility to access our network remotely. In the past the personnel had to move physically from one location to another to obtain data such as maintenance historical records or inventory records, to name just a few. Thanks to WiFi technology, this data is now brought to our employees while they are on the move, saving a lot of time and thereby increasing efficiency.
Are you looking at implementing this technology in other refineries owned by the company?
Yes, probably in the Riyadh and Jeddah refineries. It is important for us at Saudi Aramco to derive all the benefits of the installation at Ras Tanura in other refineries owned by the company. We are receiving a lot of enquiries from other refineries across the Kingdom. We normally start work in one facility, make sure the solution is perfect in all aspects, learn from the installation and then copy the same in other refineries.
Saudi Aramco has implemented WiMax technology for its gas oil separation plants between Qatif and Dhahran. Can you tell me why this was done?
The distance between the two plants is 35km and involved crossing over an area of huge infrastructure where finding a special route for fibre optic cables was difficult. This is where we found WiMax technology viable and cheaper to meet our objective.
We are seeing potential of this technology on our drilling rigs which are located in remote areas and it is here that we can extend our network and get data from these fields onto the network. We are looking closely at this possibility. Here I must mention that what we have used in our implementation is “WiMax ready” products. There are no products in the market that are officially “WiMax Certified”.
Fibre optics, I believe, is the backbone of your data network. Do you think WiMax can replace Optical Fibre Cables in the future?
It depends on how this technology develops over the next few years. As I mentioned earlier, we can look at this technology when laying OFC becomes difficult because of issues such as infrastructure and acquisition of right of way. We look at implementing bandwidth technologies on a case by case basis, it is not like one size fits all. Having said that, fibre optics continue to be the major source of bandwidth for Saudi Aramco, with WIFi and WiMax complementing this infrastructure. Fibre optics to us is the major infrastructure to connect our network in general.
There are security issues that come with wireless technologies such as WiMax and WiFi. How does Saudi Aramco deal with network security?
That is correct, for us at Saudi Aramco security is extremely important. We have recently deployed 24X7 information protection centres to monitor our network from a security perspective, not to monitor the network operation itself.
The more we are connected to the world, the more we are exposed to hackers and viruses, and we have to maintain a balance so whatever we implement is secure as our data is more exposed than before. What is very important, however, is not to make the security complicated and impinge on the user friendliness of the network.
How important is training of personnel in designing wireless networks?
We think part of our success lies in our human resources. All our wireless engineers are certified, they have to take certain exams before they can join our wireless group.
Some of these exams are conducted in Europe and the US. We make sure that all of our engineers are equipped with the required knowledge in this ever-moving technology and that they are always able to learn as they grow. We lay a lot of emphasis on training.
How much investment is allotted for initiatives such as wireless networks?
It depends on which area we are talking about. When it comes to implementation, it is a constant challenge to make sure that we provide the highest quality possible at the lowest cost solution. This means we look at the rest of the world, at people who have implemented such solutions in the US, Europe and Asia, and we compare our financial costs with theirs. We always keep track of what’s going on in the rest of the world to see that our solution is cheaper than theirs while maintaining the highest quality requirement. We did this while deploying ADSL in our facilities and are doing the same for WiFi.
What is your policy regarding vendors?
We tend to go with the leaders in their fields such as Dell for PCs, Microsoft, IBM for mainframes and servers, Alcatel for transmission networks and switching on our data networks and Cisco for routers and wireless. However, we continue monitoring the ever-changing information technology market to ensure that we associate only with the best providers of quality and the cheapest providers of cost. This is the relationship we have with our existing vendors.
The government’s latest gas initiative has seen many international petroleum companies partner with Saudi Aramco to explore for and develop gas finds in the Kingdom. Have these companies approached Saudi Aramco for the provision of IT services?
These companies have the choice to implement their own IT or to approach us to provide them with the required services. We will not impose any decision on them. Having said that, we have already been approached by them after their market study on IT services. However, we have to make sure that we comply with the charter of our company, which means we require governmental permission before we offer any such services to these companies.
As Manager of the Communications Engineering & Techical Support department, what is your biggest challenge?
A challenge for our company is to maintain very competitive oil prices, which translates into a greater utilization of IT services. My department’s challenge is to make sure we have no downtime on our IT network. We have already launched a zero downtime campaign in Saudi Aramco, whereby we are trying to compare IT with electricity, to have a network up and running at all times, to the point one forgets that it exists.
Our users depend on our network more than they did in the past and if the IT network is down business is down. We perform continuous simulation of failures to make sure that the network is reliable and our engineers have to design everything perfectly
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