BHP announced 18 June that it has selected Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft as the long-term cloud service providers for its global asset portfolio in a bid to improve safety, productivity and reliability company wide.

The collaborations, the miner said, will back two distinct parts of its operations: AWS for digital transformation, and Microsoft – through its Azure platform – will host its worldwide applications portfolio.

More specifically, AWS will provide the company capabilities in data analytics and machine learning so that it can rapidly deploy its digital solutions anywhere in the world, boosting operational performance. Moreover, Microsoft will allow BHP to leverage its existing licenses with the company and its SAP applications portfolio to reduce reliance on regional data centres.

“Digital technology is in everything we do at BHP, from how we connect to our customers and partners every day to how we extract and find resources more safely and sustainably,” CTO Laura Tyler said of the move, which she said was important in the miner’s digital transformation.

“We are leveraging next generation technologies like cloud, machine learning, and data analytics to solve complex business problems and unlock value even faster.

“Cloud is the foundation to our plans, and it will enable us to deploy digital solutions to the frontline quickly and at scale. Cloud will dramatically reduce the amount of hardware on sites, and reduce costs.”

Source: BHP