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Success Story: Pason

Connecting an energy sector innovator


In 1978, Pason began in Calgary, Alberta as a technology startup designing remote drilling chokes for the oil and gas industry. Pason now operates around the world and is the industry’s only oilfield specialist to provide critical drilling data in real time, which enables their  customers  to make quicker, more informed decisions at their rig sites. “We want to make sure that our customers can drill efficiently and safely, and optimize their operations,” says Sandeep Parmar, Manager of Corporate IT and Security at Pason. “We have over 150 employees in our research and development and IT teams, and we have different parts of the technology spectrum deployed at the rig sites; there are  sensors, computers, servers and communications components.” Pason also designs all of the firmware and software for their customer-facing  app.

Despite all of this expertise and equipment, providing real-time data to and from the remote rig sites is easier said than done.

Challenge

“Our customers expect us to communicate back to our data centres or to their corporate headquarters in real time,” says Sandeep. “The biggest challenge that we faced was getting the data back to our customers. The rigs are often in very remote areas, so connectivity was often a problem.”

The reason for this spotty connectivity wasn’t just the remoteness of the sites—it was the network Pason had to rely on. “Traditionally, we used a lot of satellite infrastructure to transfer data from the rig sites to our data centres,” explains Sandeep. “It’s very expensive to transmit the data using satellite networks, and we always suffered from performance problems.” Pason also relied on High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) network technology—essentially 3G—which ultimately proved insufficient. “We did find a lot of availability and coverage problems with HSPA,” he adds.

Pason needed a more reliable network offering greater speeds and capacity to provide what their customers expected from them: real-time drilling data for greater oil rig safety and efficiency.

“They really helped us to understand the rollout of their towers in the rural areas we operate in and how that would improve over time, and we worked with them to come up with an IoT program using Rogers SIMs at all of our rig operations.”

Solution

“When we started thinking about replacing our legacy systems, we reached out to Rogers pretty early on to understand the scale and scope of the LTE network,” says Sandeep. “We were very keen to get some added availability with LTE.” Providing the speed and capacity Pason needed to meet their customers’ demands at an affordable price, the Rogers LTE network wasn’t the only reason Pason was glad they reached out to Rogers; another was the way Rogers worked with Pason to ensure they got the remote coverage they needed. “Rogers was very collaborative with us,” says Sandeep. “They really helped us to understand the rollout of their towers in the rural areas we operate in and how that would improve over time, and we worked with them to come up with an IoT program using Rogers SIMs at all of our rig operations.”

Of course, all of that data has to go somewhere, and that’s where Rogers Data Centre Services come into play. “Our primary data centre right here in Calgary is a Rogers data centre,” says Sandeep. “In 2013, Calgary suffered a pretty significant flood, so we were certainly quite concerned about how the facility would handle such an event.” However, the Rogers data centre didn’t disappoint, offering consistent uptime and stability. “That was quite impressive to us,” says Sandeep.

A crane with mountains in the back

Data centre services and IoT connectivity via LTE are not the only services Pason has with Rogers. “We leverage the Rogers wireline network, in particular the Rogers MPLS service, for our corporate connectivity,” says Sandeep. A highly secure means of privately connecting office locations and data centres, MPLS gives customers the ability to manage capacity and prioritize different types of traffic, such as voice or video, preventing congestion and ensuring a better end-user experience. Pason uses MPLS from Rogers to connect all of their corporate locations. “Using that MPLS circuit in the network, we want to improve our video conferencing experience—our collaborative experience—between the offices,” says Sandeep. “We rely on Rogers more and more for our data centres, our infrastructure and our network links.”

The single-touch support Pason enjoys with Rogers is yet another reason for their high degree of customer satisfaction—something that hasn’t been the case with other telecom providers. “With them,” says Sandeep, “there was always a distinction between the wireline line of business and the wireless line of business. You would always have to deal with different teams. With Rogers, we found it was very different, because there’s a single point of contact. I found that to be very useful, and our support has been excellent. We continue to be happy with it.”

“We rely on Rogers more and more for our data centres, our infrastructure and our network links.”

Results

Since switching to LTE connectivity, Pason has been able to provide their customers with a much-improved experience. Plus, the stellar support Rogers provides Pason plays a significant role in the company’s continued success. “What excites me most about the future is the pace of change,” says Sandeep. “We look for technology partners that don’t just see one arm of our business, but the broader spectrum of what we’re trying to do as we grow ourselves. Any major technology change for a company requires a partner that can actually see the bigger picture and help you find specific optimizations by taking advantage of other products in their portfolio. We look at Rogers as that partner. It’s a testament to us making the right choice choosing Rogers.”

To learn more about our LTE, IoT, Data Centre and Private Networking services, speak to your Rogers account representative or visit: rogers.com/enterprise-contact