Sharepoint Server Boosts Great Offshore's Application Integration

Great Offshore commenced operations in 1983 and provides end-to-end services for offshore oil and gas exploration and production activities. The company is into offshore drilling, logistics support, marine construction projects, port and terminal support businesses.

The company migrated from Hummingbird DMS to Sharepoint server 2007 in July 2007 in about two months time with approximately one lakh documents included in the process.

Installation and configuration issues with Hummingbird

With Hummingbird, document opening was becoming a problem. “One had to save the document on the desktop and use the installed software to open the document,” informed Mohandas Manghat, asst general manager, Great Offshore who headed the migration process.

There were also issues regarding installation and configuration. Hummingbird was not running well in a newly installed PC ans sometimes the server used to hang up. Also the interface was different from Windows and did not facilitate Autocad files, which created problems in opening the files and viewing it.

“Right from the installation stage, Hummingbird was a good tool as far as document management was concerned but it was not able to integrate with other applications. So we wanted a tool which could interact with other products so that there was no inconsistency with the latest version," said Manghat.

“Hummingbird is a tool for the vertical industry whereas we have operations running at various locations on the Indian shore; Malaysia, UAE, North Sea, Middle East with a total of 41 vessels. The Sharepoint server is a web enabled application and made it possible for us to store information department wise,” said Nicholas Kulukundis, GM, Strategic Planning, Great Offshore.

Why Sharepoint Server 2007?

Great Offshore evaluated Oracle Files but Sharepoint Server encompassed features that could fulfill the company’s key requirements.

“The Sharepoint server enabled the construction of an Intranet server, team based intranet. The application facilitates check-in and checkout of documents thereby we come to know whether the document is in use or not,” said Kulukundis.

The application also facilitates document creation on the basis of departments and produces a customised profile for each of those documents. “The application will also help us cater to the communication traffic for our upcoming office at World Trade Centre in Mumbai,” observed Kulukundis.

“Sharepoint server facilitates quick transfer of files or ship designs through Intranet whereby one does not have to download them but just open a different window and the designs are ready to be worked upon,” said Kulukundis.

The company plans to use the Sharepoint Server 2007 as an information base for the employees.

Reaping the benefits

The portal based system, which the Sharepoint Server offers has enabled Great Offshore to create diaries for the employees and customise the applications. “We also plan to come up with a private interface for all the employees to keep their personal information so that they could access it wherever they are with either a laptop or a Blackberry while they need it on-site,” states Kulukundis.

“I am a firm believer in giving access to advanced technology to my employees which will ultimately facilitate in enhancing their personal capabilities resulting in improved company performance," he further added.

Great Offshore is planning to integrate various other applications with the Sharepoint server. The company is also trying to integrate inhouse built Oracle applications on Java platform with the Sharepoint server.