What Fuels an Oilfield Services Company? The Cloud, of Course.

Most people think of the Old West and 200 foot-high gushers when oilfields are mentioned, but Seventy Seven Energy Systems Architect Chris Dodds thinks of cloud solutions and identity management.

When Oklahoma-based oilfield services company Seventy Seven Energy spun off from Chesapeake Energy almost two years ago, Chris Dodds and his team were charged with building a new IT support system for the company in just 12 months. The benefits of working from a blank canvas were clear, like dumping legacy applications and adopting a flexible platform that provides options, but this was no small undertaking. Dodds happily accepted the challenge, and so did we.

Seamless, Secure Cloud Convergence

While Seventy Seven Energy was able to unload many of Chesapeake’s legacy applications, some of the on-premises apps remained. The seamless and secure convergence of legacy apps with new cloud services is a problem that plagues IT decision-makers across all industries in today’s IT landscape, but we had the right solutions for Dodds. Our extensive application network already had many of the cloud solutions Dodds planned to implement, resulting in significantly reduced configuration times. The scope of our provisioning integrations allowed for easy user on- and off-boarding. Our Universal Directory provided easy access to other users and apps, and our Adaptive MFA increased security protections while also maintaining flexibility based on individual user needs.

“As we started building a cloud infrastructure to make our organization more flexible, we realized that we would have to keep a few legacy applications in the mix. By implementing Okta to manage access to over 100 applications for our employees, we’ve been able to improve our end users’ experience and enhance security,” said Dodds. Seventy Seven Energy has seen more than $600,000 in IT savings alone since making the switch to Okta.

Finding Freedom in the Field

Like the wide-open spaces of a Texas oilfield, Seventy Seven Energy required a platform that provided the same kind of freedom. Despite launching with Office 365, Dodds wanted to have more freedom to choose new apps and the flexibility to deploy new services. ”We don’t want to lock in with anybody... If we decide in the future that we want to roll out Google Apps, we can do that and it’s not a big deal.” says Dodds.

With countless secure options and automated processes in place, Dodds’ team has been able to expand their role. Powered by Okta, Seventy Seven Energy is now able to function as business analysts, working in tandem with business units to identify inefficiencies and implement solutions. “We’ve been able to drive the product in the direction we needed it to go,” says Dodds. And for any organization, that’s as good as striking oil.

To learn more about Seventy Seven Energy’s journey with Okta watch the below video.