Devon Energy increases productivity with Microsoft technologies

Devon Energy, an oil and gas exploration and production firm based in Oklahoma City, USA, has moved to Microsoft 365 Enterprise and Microsoft Azure to maximise productivity for its 3,500 employees, many of whom work at drilling and production sites.

Writing for a blog post on the Microsoft Office website, Matt Harper, director of information security and infrastructure at Devon Energy, says that Microsoft Enterprise 365 “has the potential to empower all our users.”

Microsoft 365 Enterprise includes Office 365, Windows 10 Enterprise, and Enterprise Mobility + Security (EMS).

“We’re making Windows 10 our standard operating system for nearly 8,000 desktop and laptop computers,” said Harper. “This will give our employees a better cloud experience and allow us to use the security capabilities built into EMS. We’re also looking forward to using Windows 10 roaming profiles to support more remote workforce capabilities. We’re very interested in the advanced authentication capabilities like biometrics, anomalous user behaviour detection, and data protection capabilities that EMS provides.”

Office 365 will give field workers the ability to access data immediately from any device to inform decision making, and Skype for Business Online on mobile devices will allow engineers to connect with colleagues 1,000 miles away to get the input they need.

“Our time-to-productivity has improved because of this easier access to data; in some cases, we’ve reduced hours to minutes,” said Harper.

Devon Energy is also using Power BI, part of the Microsoft Enterprise 365 E5 plan, to make dashboard creation easier and is also moving line of business applications and disaster recovery operations to Microsoft Azure. This will offer speed and scalability, and the potential for significant cost saving.

“Our ability to right-size our technology is key to managing costs in the cloud,” added Harper. “We continually buy and sell field assets, so our workforce continually expands and contracts. Previously, we would build for peak capacity and end up with underutilised datacenter resources. With Azure and Microsoft 365 Enterprise, we can right-size our technologies and scale as needed.”