Project Summary

British Petroleum (BP), one of the world’s largest energy companies, undertook a massive digital transformation initiative in 2017 to modernise its global IT infrastructure. Facing rising costs from legacy systems and increasing competitive pressure, BP migrated 900+ applications to the cloud, creating a flexible, secure, and cost-efficient technology foundation.

Solutions Adopted

BP implemented a multi-cloud strategy with the following components:

  • Microsoft Azure is the primary cloud platform for enterprise applications
  • Amazon Web Services (AWS) for specific workloads requiring specialised services
  • Google Cloud Platform for advanced analytics and AI implementations
  • VMware Cloud Foundation for hybrid cloud capabilities
  • Implemented Infrastructure as Code (IaC) using Terraform and Ansible
  • Containerization with Kubernetes for application modernisation
  • CI/CD pipelines using Jenkins and GitLab

Implementation Costs

  • Initial infrastructure investment: $65 million
  • Migration costs: $120 million over three years
  • Training and upskilling: $15 million
  • Third-party implementation partners: $40 million
  • Total investment: Approximately $240 million

Implementation Duration

  • Planning phase: 6 months (January-June 2017)
  • Pilot migration (30 applications): 4 months (July-October 2017)
  • Wave 1 migration (200 applications): 8 months (November 2017-June 2018)
  • Wave 2 migration (350 applications): 10 months (July 2018-April 2019)
  • Wave 3 migration (320+ applications): 12 months (May 2019-April 2020)
  • Total duration: 3.5 years (January 2017-June 2020)

Savings and Benefits

  • Annual infrastructure cost reduction: $90 million (35% reduction)
  • Server provisioning time reduced from weeks to hours
  • 99.99% infrastructure availability (up from 98.5%)
  • 60% reduction in security incidents
  • 40% improved application performance
  • Carbon footprint reduction of approximately 30% for IT operations
  • Enhanced disaster recovery capabilities with 85% faster recovery times
  • ROI achieved within 2.5 years of project completion