Landmark Graphics to Announce Linux Application Support Strategy at the 2001 SEG Annual Meeting
Compaq, Dell, EMC, IBM, Intel, Network Appliance and Other Key Technology Providers to Help Advance the Open Source OS Within the Upstream E&P Market
Landmark Graphics Corp., a wholly owned business unit of Halliburton Company (NYSE:HAL), today announced plans to offer its full suite of integrated UNIX exploration and production applications on a range of Linux platforms with rollout beginning in the fourth quarter of 2001. This marks the most significant commitment to date by a major technology provider in the oil and gas industry to support the "open source" Linux operating system. Compaq, Dell, EMC, IBM, Intel and Network Appliance are working with Landmark to offer a broad range of optimized Linux solutions, including workstations, servers and storage."Linux is emerging as a significant force in the UNIX world. Landmark has been investigating Linux for some time, and we've been working closely with our customers to gauge their interest and intent around it," said John Gibson, Landmark's president and CEO. "What we've been hearing from our customers is that they are implementing or planning to implement Linux in a wide range of applications today. Our customers have told us overwhelmingly that they would like to see Landmark provide Linux support as an option. They also believe Landmark is in a natural position to be the leader in helping to bring the benefits of Linux to the energy market."
John Sherman, Landmark's executive vice president of Marketing and Systems, added, "Supporting Linux is a natural extension of our continuing commitment to open systems and maximizing value for our customers. Offering Landmark's integrated product suite on Linux broadens the choices available for our customers to build scalable, cost-effective computing environments. We're working closely with a great group of partners - Compaq, Dell, EMC, IBM, Intel and Network Appliance - to ensure that Landmark customers are able to rapidly benefit from the innovations inherent in Linux."
Gary Campbell, vice president of Enterprise Server Strategy for the Office of CTO at Compaq, stated, "The energy industry is a key vertical for us, and we've been actively pursuing new options around Linux to support our customers there. It is clear that the open source community has made tremendous inroads over the past 10 years in establishing Linux as a viable platform for a variety of mission-critical applications. By working with vertical leaders like Landmark, we believe that we can best provide the kinds of services and solutions - optimized on our workstation platforms - that customers in the energy industry are asking for."
Joe Curley of Dell noted, "Our commitment to Linux as a core part of our business continues to grow rapidly each year. With this announcement, it's clear that the critical mass for widespread adoption of Linux in the upstream E&P market has arrived. We look forward to working closely with Landmark in meeting the unique requirements of this key vertical industry."
The massive storage requirement in the upstream industry is another factor driving the adoption of new, open source platforms, notes Mike Parise, EMC vice president of Integrated Marketing. "With the amount of data doubling annually, our upstream customers demand solutions that enable them to maximize storage utilization and manage more data with greater efficiency - across all their computing platforms - including Linux. By teaming in this effort, EMC and Landmark Graphics enable our joint E&P customers to consolidate storage resources more flexibly, perform bulk seismic data transfers faster and more reliably, broaden the choice of data center topologies and lower the cost of storage infrastructure."
IBM is investing more than one billion dollars in Linux this year alone, and is working closely with software vendors to help deploy Linux-based applications across the industry. Since January, IBM has seen a 40% increase in the number of Linux-based applications from its partners. "We believe the upstream energy market is an ideal candidate for rapid adoption of Linux because of its unsurpassed ability to better manage the high-performance computing requirements of seismic processing and reservoir simulation," said John Sarsgard, vice president Linux marketing and sales, America, IBM. "We're pleased to be working with Landmark on this strategic initiative because it offers so many long-term benefits to our mutual customers." IBM supports the operating system across its entire product portfolio, including Websphere middleware, IBM Global Services and IBM hardware such as the xSeries and Shark storage systems.
John Davies, vice president and director of the Intel Market Development Group, said, "We believe that the benefits of Linux running on open, powerful and competitively priced Intel-based platforms will play an important role in the evolving compute structure of the oil and gas industry. We're very pleased to lend our support to Landmark in this important initiative."
According to Network Appliance Senior Vice President of Marketing, Mark Santora, "Network Appliance provides enterprise-class storage and content delivery solutions, enabling the upstream oil and gas industry to deploy and manage their information on a global basis with the lowest total cost of ownership in the industry. To help deliver these solutions with Landmark Graphics, we're rapidly moving ahead with a range of multi-vendor Linux initiatives to delivery fully on the benefits of open source compatibility and reliability."
Landmark Graphics and its strategic Linux partners will host a press event at the 2001 Society of Exploration Geophysicists Annual Meeting in San Antonio, Texas, on Monday September 10. The event will take place at 12 noon in the Landmark Booth (no. 2911) at the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center.
Landmark is the leading supplier of software and services for the upstream oil and gas industry. The company's software solutions span exploration, production, drilling, business decision analysis and data management. Landmark offers a broad range of consulting services that enable customers to optimize their technical, business and decision processes. Visit the Landmark Web site at www.lgc.com for more information.
Halliburton Company, founded in 1919, is the world's largest provider of products and services to the petroleum and energy industries. The company serves its customers with a broad range of products and services through its Energy Services Group and Engineering and Construction Group business segments. The company's World Wide Web site can be accessed at www.halliburton.com.
For more information about Compaq, please visit www.compaq.com.
For more information about Dell, please visit www.dell.com.
For more information about EMC, please visit www.emc.com.
For more information about IBM, please visit www.ibm.com.
For more information about Intel, please visit www.intel.com.
For more information about Network Appliance, please visit
www.networkappliance.com.
Landmark and the Landmark logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Landmark Graphics Corp. All other trademarks, service marks and product or service names are the trademarks or names of their respective owners.
CONTACT: Landmark Graphics Corp., Houston
Eric Johnson, 281/649-4056
ejohnson@lgc.com
or
Rod Hotz, 281/368-5766
rhotz@lgc.com