Case study · Oil & Gas / Energy · Houston, USA
A Houston oil & gas company ran production-critical applications — drilling reporting, production allocation, ERP interfaces — with no support model beyond “call the developer”. ITSECOPS took over application operations with a 24×7 support desk, defined SLAs and monthly service reporting.
The client
A mid-sized exploration and production company headquartered in Houston, with field operations feeding data into a portfolio of business-critical applications around the clock.
The challenge
When an overnight interface failed, morning production reports were wrong — and nobody owned the fix. Application knowledge lived in the heads of two contractors, incidents had no severity model, and finance had no visibility into what support actually cost.
What we did
- Built an application runbook library: dependencies, restart procedures, interface schedules and known-error database for every supported app.
- Stood up a 24×7 application operations desk with P1–P4 severity definitions and response SLAs matched to production impact, not office hours.
- Instrumented job and interface monitoring so failures page an engineer before the morning report is wrong.
- Introduced monthly service reviews: incident trends, SLA attainment, problem-management actions and a cost-per-application view for finance.
- Ran knowledge-transfer sessions that moved tribal knowledge from contractors into documentation the company owns.
Results
- Overnight interface failures now caught and fixed before start of business — morning production reporting reliable since go-live.
- Support moved from two indispensable individuals to a documented, staffed service.
- Predictable monthly support cost replaced unbudgeted emergency invoices.
FAQ
What is application operations support?
Ongoing ownership of business applications after go-live: monitoring, incident and problem management, minor enhancements, interface care and vendor coordination — run to SLAs instead of goodwill.
Why does oil & gas need 24×7 application support?
Production does not keep office hours. Allocation, drilling reporting and HSE systems feed decisions made at 3am — application failures at night become operational and compliance failures by morning.
Can this be delivered remotely?
Yes — runbook-driven application operations is delivered from our 24×7 operations hubs, with on-site visits only for major transitions.