Production computing management

Abstract

Exxon Co. International (ECI) was formed in July 1986 to handle Exxon's oil and gas operations outside the U.S. and Canada. One part of this responsibility was coordination of the application and use of information systems technology, which required a significant amount of funds. To focus this coordination, development of an Upstream Computing Framework was initiated in 1988. This framework would serve as a management and planning guide for use in meeting the different requirements of the affiliated companies. The framework required 2 work-years of effort from a multidisciplinary team. The focus of this paper is the production portion of the framework, the implementation of which began in Jan. 1989. This paper summarized the Upstream Computing Framework and the results from its use to coordinate the development of production computing applications. Six key areas are addressed: development of a set of core technical computing tools; development of core computing and telecommunications hardware and software standards; guidelines and principles for data resource management (DRM); planing for the complexity that computer training places on an organization; strategic application planning; and assessing, capturing, and stewarding the benefits of production computing. The last two items are the most significant, and examples of their implementationmore » and benefits are presented.« less