Redlands, California — October 01, 2010 — Esri is now participating in the Microsoft Upstream Reference Architecture initiative, an endeavor to enhance applications integration and interoperability for the upstream oil and gas sector.

The initiative supports Microsoft's ongoing effort to enable collaborative workflows and multivendor data accessibility across the full exploration and production business life cycle. Esri will provide a spatial foundation for geoscience applications interoperability.

Esri's geographic information system (GIS) platform is used by petroleum companies and vendors throughout the world, and Esri has established a long track record of providing the spatial data management foundation for oil and gas users. In collaborating with other Microsoft Upstream Reference Architecture solution providers, Esri brings its geospatial expertise and GIS capabilities to the initiative.

Leveraging technologies from several partners, many of which are already using Esri's ArcGIS products and services, the project combines data, systems, and workflows from exploration, production, operations, finance, and other critical business areas. "Management of the oilfield life cycle demands complete integration from subsurface interpretation to production," said Ali Ferling, managing director of Worldwide Oil and Gas Industry at Microsoft. "A flexible and open IT foundation is critical in delivering a common, integrated approach to digital oilfield operations. With its sole focus on providing spatial data management capability, Esri will play an important role in the realization of the Microsoft Upstream Reference Architecture initiative, bringing the capability for full GIS integration to initiative-enabled operations and production systems."

The initiative will provide participating organizations with an invaluable road map to streamlining the implementation of integrated, workflow-oriented, smart field operations technologies.

"Esri welcomes the growing Microsoft Upstream Reference Architecture initiative and is pleased to join its ranks," said Geoff Wade, Esri's global petroleum industry manager. "We look forward to providing a solid spatial data management foundation for the integrated upstream solutions platform of tomorrow. Esri's ArcGIS system, the leading GIS platform in the industry, will provide the stability and performance for initiative participants to leverage with ease. We are confident that this groundbreaking initiative will allow a more flexible, open approach to integrating cloud-capable, domain-specific applications, and by so doing, considerably improve operational workflows."

About Esri

Since 1969, Esri has been giving customers around the world the power to think and plan geographically. The market leader in GIS technology, Esri software is used in more than 300,000 organizations worldwide including each of the 200 largest cities in the United States, most national governments, more than two-thirds of Fortune 500 companies, and more than 7,000 colleges and universities. Esri applications, running on more than one million desktops and thousands of Web and enterprise servers, provide the backbone for the world's mapping and spatial analysis. Esri is the only vendor that provides complete technical solutions for desktop, mobile, server, and Internet platforms. Visit us at www.esri.com/news.



Contact:

Barbara Shields,
Esri
Tel.: 909-793-2853, extension 1-2641
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