KNPC selects VMware Network Virtualization and Cloud Management Platforms as foundations for cloud transformation

IT Automation and Security Enable Faster Service Delivery to Accelerate Decision Making and Innovation, Making IT a Strategic Business Partner

PALO ALTO, CA -- (Marketwired) -- 07/18/16 -- VMware, Inc.(NYSE: VMW) , a global leader in cloud infrastructure and business mobility, today announced Kuwait National Petroleum Company (KNPC) will deploy VMware NSX® network virtualization and VMware vRealize® Suite to deliver IT as a Service through a new multi-site private cloud. Through its cloud initiative, and with the help of VMware technologies, KNPC will accelerate service delivery, improve IT efficiency and deliver a better customer experience.

KNPC is one of the biggest oil and gas companies in the Gulf region, and is considered an agile, forward-looking and innovative player in the Gulf oil sector. The company has two main refineries, and is building one of the biggest refineries in the world. KNPC partnered with VMware to move from server virtualization to the private cloud to deliver IT as a Service to the company's growing base of users. This cloud transformation is occurring in parallel with the organization's adoption of DevOps methodologies. Ultimately the long term strategy is to deliver a community cloud offering Infrastructure as a Service, Platform as a Service and Database as a Service to developers both at the company and its sister companies.

"Our adoption of a VMware-based software-defined data centre will enable our cloud transformation, and help IT be a strategic partner by operating at the speed at which our business is moving," said Abdulaziz A. Al-Duaij, Manager Information Technology Department in KNPC. "The units throughout our refineries depend on IT services for informed decision making. Our VMware-based private cloud lets us provision IT services faster, and enables us to put applications and Big Data on top of our cloud services so senior management has access to actionable business intelligence."

KNPC has deployed VMware vRealize Suite for cloud management and operations. With vRealize Operations™, KNPC IT gains better visibility into the IT infrastructure. This enables the company to better predict capacity requirements, and enables faster time to resolution through proactive monitoring. The IT automation capabilities of vRealize Automation help eliminate manual tasks, which makes IT more efficient and also minimizes security risk.

KNPC realized quickly that the company could not fully achieve the benefits of a multi-site private cloud without virtualizing the network. Without VMware NSX network virtualization, the network would remain a bottleneck to servicing the business by limiting the ability to roll out new or updated services with full security in a timely manner. KNPC will use NSX for both automation, security and application continuity. With NSX micro-segmentation, IT will be able to apply granular controls to application security and build a highly resilient and natively secure SDDC. NSX will enable KNPC to live migrate VMs or entire data centres from one location to another with little to no application downtime. Finally, NSX will enable KNPC to pool compute resources from any of their existing three physical data centres which will operate as a single logical cloud.

KNPC believes the payoffs from its VMware-based private cloud will be very tangible. Service delivery will be 60-70 percent faster, which will help mitigate shadow IT. High levels of automation, better visibility and the ability to implement a hardware vendor-agnostic infrastructure will drive down costs. KNPC IT expects to achieve resource utilization rates that are 3x better, and every day management activities known as "keep the lights on" costs are expected to go down by as much as 60 percent. These budget savings can be invested in new innovations. Finally, KNPC expects the VMware-based private cloud will help them improve overall IT's overall customer satisfaction rating.