Business Challenge
Enabling fast, easy and reliable delivery of large energy infrastructure inspection data sets, up to several terabytes, to anywhere in the world.
Transformation
IBM Aspera Shares provides a simple and intuitive way to securely and quickly transfer large data to any of ROSEN Group’s 22 worldwide offices; Aspera Console provides complete visibility over the entire transfer environment with ability to prioritize data transfers and fully utilize all available bandwidth.
Results
Speed & Reliability
Aspera provides incredibly fast and reliable transfers, with automatic retry and restart from the point of interruption for partial or failed transfersSecurity & User Access
Data integrity verifications for each transmitted block, protecting data throughout the transfer process. Also provided single sign-on for seamless access with employees’ Smart CardsEase-of-use
Aspera’s intuitive user experience allows every team member at ROSEN Group to easily start sharing files at high-speed with little or no trainingBusiness Challenge Story
Seeking cost-efficient global data transfer
Field technicians examine customer assets such as pipelines, refineries, plants, tanks, vessels, wind turbines, trains, and telecommunication towers. These inspections generate inspection data that must be shared with one or more of the 22 offices and technology & research centers around the world for analysis. ROSEN Group needed a reliable and secure high-speed data transfer solution that provided complete visibility over the entire transfer environment to predictably complete projects.
With individual files between 500 MB and several GBs and entire data sets between 50 GB up to several terabytes, traditional transfer technologies were much too slow or were simply impractical. In order to prevent any potential corruption of files, employees manually checked the data integrity before and after data transfers to resend any missing files. This problem regularly required significant time by employees and slowed down the end-to-end process greatly.
For larger data sets, ROSEN Group was forced to ship USB drives, which took as long as a week due to customs. Also during peak periods throughout the month, USB drives were shipped on a daily basis, which became costly and time consuming.
Efficiency, reliability and speed were critical requirements for ROSEN Group and its customers since the failure of an energy company’s infrastructure could have significant consequences to the ecology and human populations.
“ Aspera is now a critical part of our growing success. It gives us the ability to become aware of problems and to address them much more quickly to better serve our customers. ”
— Heiner Susse, IT Service & Product Manager, ROSEN Group
Transformation Story
High-speed transfers and complete visibility
Being familiar with Aspera, ROSEN Group decided to test Aspera Shares in four of its more critical locations during its proof-of-concept – Brazil (Rio de Janeiro), Germany (Lingen), Netherlands (Oldenzaal) and United States (Houston, Texas). As a testament to its ease of installation and use, employees immediately started using Aspera Shares without any training, resulting in exceptionally positive feedback as data transfers were delivered 300 percent faster. After a very successful evaluation, Aspera software was deployed in all of its 22 offices and technology & research centers around the world in just two weeks.
ROSEN Group deployed Aspera Shares and transfer servers and added Aspera Console for complete visibility over all transfers and ability to prioritize transfers and maximize use of available bandwidth.
Results story
300 percent faster transfer of energy inspection data sets
With the huge increase in the speed and reliability of data transfers and full visibility of the Aspera deployment, ROSEN Group can now accurately plan, allocate resources and predictably deliver large inspection analyses to customers while also achieving significant cost savings.
Aspera Shares enables employees to begin working with inspection data immediately by providing email notifications to all recipients when transfers have completed. In addition, key employees can access Aspera Console to track important transfer completion times to assist in planning and allocating staffing resources and communicating the timing of project deliverables to customers. The IT department has the ability to prioritize transfers from within Aspera Console and use the Vlink feature to cap bandwidth utilization based on time of day and business needs to ensure these transfers finish as fast as possible without impacting other existing network traffic.
Additionally, since all Aspera technology and solutions include built-in data integrity verification, ROSEN Group was able to eliminate the time-intensive burden of performing manual checks for corrupted files.
"By using Aspera to transfer large files in only minutes or hours, we no longer have to ship USB drives, which has significantly reduced some costs. More importantly, it’s drastically increased our team's productivity and turnaround by improving the flow of data globally," said Heiner Susse, IT Service & Product Manager, ROSEN Group.
With the success of the initial deployment, more ROSEN Group teams have requested to use Aspera software throughout the enterprise for a variety of use cases. While Aspera was originally deployed for transfers between offices by the core business, it has quickly expanded for use by many field technicians transferring large inspection data to the offices from dispersed sites all over the world. Aspera’s high-speed data transfer solutions are now used for long-term archival globally. Additionally, Aspera is used to complete backups to the nearest office from remote locations including remote offices where no IT infrastructure exists.
“Aspera is now a critical part of our growing success. It gives us the ability to become aware of problems and to address them much more quickly to better serve our customers,” concluded Susse.
Rosen Group
The ROSEN Group, headquartered in Stans, Switzerland, is a global provider of inspection and integrity products, services and research and development for safe and reliable operations of the oil and gas and broader energy industry.
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