ABU DHABI, 22 February 2005 — In a move to benefit the region’s oil and gas sector, IBM Middle East and Intel on Sunday unveiled a range of pioneering new solutions at the Energy Competency Center (ECC) located at the Higher Colleges of Technology (HCT) Center of Excellence for Applied Research and Training (CERT) in Abu Dhabi. This is the first announcement regarding the global joint initiative between Intel and IBM, empowering oil and gas companies with the means to develop and test new technology strategies to improve reservoir/facility management and production through distributed and collaborative environments. IBM and Intel expect to announce a number of similar facilities around the world this year.

Originally established in 2002 as a joint initiative between IBM and Intel, the ECC is a one of a kind center in the Middle East. Over the past two years, it has been a valued resource for exploration and production companies and solution providers such as Schlumberger and Landmark, who have used the facility to further expand IT competency in the energy sector. These companies will now find it easier to test, evaluate and take full advantage of key technology solutions that have not been available before, including deep computing visualization, on-demand computing, grid computing, digital enablement of key assets to enable real time monitoring and alerts and asset life cycle management.

“From the oil fields to the data centers, advanced technologies have been critical to the success of the oil and gas sector. High-performance computing clusters analyze terabytes of seismic processing and reservoir simulation data. Sophisticated 3D visualization algorithms provide insights and understanding. Wireless handheld computers and laptops enable access to important data and applications from exploration and drilling sites. These technologies and others have helped the industry find and extract deposits more quickly and efficiently, while controlling costs and reducing risks,” said Dr. Tayeb Kamali, chancellor, HCT. “We are extremely proud to announce that a new generation of advanced technologies will now be available through the ECC, the region’s most sophisticated testing facility.”

The ECC lab is equipped with highly sophisticated and open hardware, software and middleware technologies, with a wide range of IBM xSeries servers and Linux-based IntelliStation graphics workstations that are based on several Intel-chip platforms, including the Intel Pentium 4 processor, the Intel Xeon processor and the Intel Itanium 2 processor. The latest solutions for the oil and gas sector can be demonstrated at the ECC. Customers can supply their own data for simulations approaching reality in that user’s environment. IBM’s solutions on display include:

• Deep Computing Visualization (DCV): In an environment where enormous volumes of seismic, well log and other geophysical and geological data are essential to making sound business decisions, visualization and collaboration are critical. Based on open standards, IBM’s DCV provides dramatically improved visualization capabilities by combining innovative middleware with the capabilities of Intel’s newest processor technologies and the latest generation of commodity graphics adapters. The core middleware allows a customer to work with off-the-shelf hardware, significantly reducing the customer’s bottom line while still producing a flexible and powerful visualization solution that enables oil and gas companies to work with much larger models and enjoy much faster visualization performance.

Grid Computing: The energy sector environment today requires fast, accurate decision-making to manage and optimize reservoir assets. Grid computing enables oil and gas companies to maximize their seismic analysis and reservoir management decision-making and operations by unlocking untapped resources and increasing computational throughput. This will help them to considerably accelerate analytical processes, reaching end-results far more rapidly than within conventional computing environments. Grid computing also provides the necessary access, data and processing power to rapidly resolve complex reservoir and seismic problems, conduct computation-intensive research and data analysis and engage in real-time business on demand.

Asset Life Cycle Management: Oil and gas companies must continually focus on managing large capital assets in a more efficient and cost-effective way. With asset management, these companies can reduce cycle time, accelerate production, increase quality, extend asset life and operate assets more safely. Operating expenses are lowered and assets produce more reserves over their lifetime. Using innovative technologies such as wireless to support mobile work force collaboration, implementing collaborative knowledge-sharing environments and developing technical solutions, Intel and IBM can help these companies create significant value across the asset lifecycle.

Bob Moore, director, Chemical and Petroleum Industries, IBM EMEA, explained the significance of Sunday’s event. “We are relaunching the ECC and announcing an alliance with Intel which is much more formal that the local agreement that we had here before. We formed a global alliance and we are using that as the basis for putting new technologies in at the center. We have had a local joint marketing agreement here with Intel since 2002 but now the two companies are coming together in a global alliance.”

Moore emphasized that the ECC is all about real world solutions to challenges confronting the oil and gas sector. “This center is a showcase for our technology but that’s not its purpose. It is really a working center,” he said. “Customers can come in from all around the region and even beyond and see what these technologies can do. They can bring their challenges and we can use some of the excellent technical resources and partner resources based at this center to work on those challenges. The solutions we have unveiled today offer new ways to solve old problems and deliver revolutionary business benefits for oil and gas companies in this region. It is important, however, that these technologies are understood alongside the industry’s business and technical challenges. This is why we are collaborating with partners such as Intel to develop innovative strategies and solutions that can help these companies visualize, virtualize and integrate, allowing them to maximize the benefits of their IT investments and transform the way they carry out crucial activities. We believe that the Middle East will play a very important role in the adoption of these key technologies across the world.”

Any implementation of these new solutions for customers in the Saudi market would be handled by Saudi Business Machines (SBM), although Moore was quick to add that SBM’s team would be supported from the ECC and even from resources based anywhere in the world.

“The solutions being demonstrated at the ECC are targeted at the customer — the oil and gas companies, but we’ll be working with the people at Landmark and Schlumberger and other technology firms as key partners to develop these solutions further,” commented Moore. “What we have here is absolutely real. We have refreshed all the technology here at ECC so that we have the latest and greatest IBM platforms with Intel inside. We’ve also taken the opportunity to move the emphasis away from just hardware and now we’re really facing up to customer challenges and solutions. One of those solutions here at ECC is Deep Visualization, which is a global IBM product that was only announced on Thursday. The solution is available for everyone to come and see and hopefully take back to their own environments.”