Equinor now has a new content services platform from IBM. 

"This is a solid contribution to our “cloud first strategy “, and an important element in the continued digitalization of Equinor. We now have a modern, stable, and secure system. This ensures availability on a modern infrastructure, says Jone Solberg, Product Lead, Equinor. 

Equinor is the largest company in the Nordics with more than 20,000 employees developing oil, gas, wind, and solar energy in more than 30 countries, and the company has over 50,000 potential users of their repository. Consequently, they have vast amounts of internal and external documents that must be handled and archived every single day. The client required a more modern, automated, and flexible solution to meet their business requirements.

Same content repository for 20 years

For more than 20 years Equinor was running the same on-premise IBM repository solution, archiving documents and data. The system needed continuous upgrading and support: 

” The repository that we had for many years was increasingly in need for service and updates. The maintenance work gradually became rather demanding, and we realized we had to decide whether we should do a proper update of what we had or acquire a brand-new system. After an extensive period of evaluation, we decided to migrate to a new solution, IBM Business Automation Content Services on Cloud (BACSoC)”, states Nina Morlandstø, Technical Lead for the project at Equinor, 

The BACSoC team at Equinor have been responsible for moving all the documents from Equinor’s on premise solution to the new cloud-based repository solution provided by IBM. 

”We are satisfied with the migration process which has been both flexible, informative and well carried out. Most importantly, we are happy that the end users at Equinor - our 20,000 employees - have not been by disturbed by the migration, and that they now have a brand-new repository that is much more stable than before”, Morlandstø continues. 

Dedicated team

Equinor and IBM entered into an agreement about a new repository system in 2019, and in January 2020 the preparations began, with Morlandstø as Technical Lead. She led the core team consisting of six people, from both Equinor and IBM: 

“We quickly realized that we needed a tailor-made migration tool, due to Equinor’s large amounts of data”, says Morlandstø. 

The Equinor team designed and implemented a migration solution with a database of metadata for analysis, migration and quality assurance. 

“It soon became clear that there was a need for adaptations.  Experts from IBM Expert Labs were called on to help with implementation through IBM’s solutions”, says Snorre Sveinar from IBM Norway.

The migration 

IBM Expert Labs consists of IBM software experts. At the very beginning of the project, Vidar Berge from the software company Xper Consulting, and Florian Trauth from IBM’s expert group, hosted a preliminary workshop for Equinor. The findings of the session guided the recommended migration process based on IBM Business Automation Content Services on Cloud (BACSoC). The team also included an IBM integration solution for SAP on the clients’ preferred cloud platform.

 “All documents were transferred directly from the old IBM Content Manager solution to the new cloud based solution BACSoC“, says Snorre Sveinar.

Both Vidar Berge and Florian Trauth were active members of the group in charge of the migration, something Morlandstø sees as important to the advancements of the project: 

 “A decisive factor in the success of this extensive relocation process was that we had a well-functioning team consisting of dedicated people from both Equinor and IBM “, she states. 

Quick availability of new solution 

In parallel with historical documents being transferred to the new repository, the new cloud-based solution was also made available for all the end users at Equinor and integrated with SAP. 

“We are happy with the process, which has gone very well “, says Morlandstø.

For more information, contact: 

Snorre Sveinar, Partner Technical Specialist – IBM Data & AI, snorre.sveinar@no.ibm.com