Deploying MAS in a Disconnected Marine Environment
Stena Drilling, one of the world’s foremost independent drilling contractors, required a smooth changeover without business interruptions.
The Challenge
OpenShift complexity: The new architecture requirements for MAS posed complexities, especially for local installations on vessels. Single Node OpenShift (SNO) was not a standard deployment for MAS implementations at the time and Stena did not want any issues to impact the upgrade timeline.
Connectivity: Stena Drilling’s six vessels are located in demanding offshore and remote environments, often with limited connectivity.
Integrations: Multiple other software solutions that Stena Drilling relies on for commercial and work order tasks required integration with MAS. The changeover had to be smooth and seamless with no concerns about downtime, duplicate or lost data.
Our Solution
Cohesive developed a tailored MAS upgrade path. It included use of Cohesive Data Utility (CDU) tool—designed to support complex MAS upgrades with extracting, loading, and transforming data. It also included Cohesive Data Replicator (CDR), which promotes continuous data alignment for disconnected environments. Both tools are IBM-approved.
They leveraged knowledge and experience gained from working with multiple other oil and gas companies in remote environments, including the British Antarctic Survey.
The Results
Delivered on time and on budget, the Application Suite went live in the first week of April 2025. MAS is now a key ‘team member’ on Stena Driling’s six vessels and its Aberdeen HQ. The key benefits for Stena Driling have been:
Our program included:
- Hybrid architecture: Cohesive developed a hybrid solution with a local instance of MAS installed on each remote vessel and a new central MAS installation at Stena Driling’s Aberdeen HQ, which is hosted on the dedicated Cohesive cloud.
- A seamless, ‘no surprises’ cut over: Once hardware was onboard each vessel it sat ‘silent’ while being kept up to date with all data changes. Each vessel was cut over only after end-to-end testing.
- Full support: Throughout the early ‘go live’ stages the Cohesive team provided heightened levels of support to ensure no issues arose.
- Expert delivery team: Our team was a trusted implemented partner to Stena Drilling, having Maximo as the core EAM system across its fleet in 2019.
- MaximoWorld award (‘Best Connected Workforce’ category) enhanced Stena Driling’s industry-leading reputation.
