Driving digitized mining in Azure

About the client

OceanaGold, an Australian-based multinational company, mines gold, copper, and silver essential to the renewable energy and transport sectors, life-saving medical devices, and technology that connects communities on a global scale. The company has a well-established portfolio of operating assets, including Didipio Mine in the Philippines, Macraes and Waihi operations in New Zealand, and Haile Gold Mine in the United States.

The challenge

OceanaGold operates in a highly regulated industry with a strong emphasis on environmental stewardship and the health and safety of employees and the communities in which it operates. Continuous reviews are conducted to improve OceanaGold’s environmental management systems, practices, and standards. The company looks for ways to make mining safer, especially for people who work underground. The company is striving to improve efficiency across all operations by automating many underground operations to minimize or altogether remove the need for people to be present in danger zones.

Efficiency is business-critical in everything we do. But for that, we need to improve and drive accurate decision-making. Digitization helps us to do that by leveraging real-time data.

– said Graham Almond, EVP People Culture and Technology at OceanaGold.

Much of the equipment OceanaGold buys for mining – excavators, trucks, etc. – come with a vast array of sensors that provide data ranging from tire temperature and pressure to overburden moved to resource consumption. Drones are used to survey inaccessible areas.

A lot of data is generated on production, performance, and safety,

– said Graham.

It’s data that allows us to improve our decision making.

OceanaGold continuously drives its digital transformation, using cutting-edge technologies, making operations more effective, safer, and sustainable. The mining company decided to transition from the IBM Cloud to Microsoft Azure to attain the advanced IT infrastructure it effectively required. Consolidating with one technology provider delivered cost benefits and ROI while enhancing cloud tools and integrations available with other Microsoft solutions.

A mid-sized company of 2,000 employees, OceanaGold did not have the capacity, expertise, or experience for Azure Cloud migration, so the IT team sought additional support and guidance from SoftwareOne.

The solution

Before partnering with SoftwareOne, OceanaGold had run its Microsoft agreements and services out of New Zealand. The company needed a partner to support the supply changes in commercial agreements transnationally when moving services to Singapore. In combination with the need for support with the datacenter transition to Azure Cloud, SoftwareOne was the perfect match.

OceanaGold has come a long way in terms of its digital transformation. With its internal ADaPT Program, the company wants to drive Automation, Digital, and Process Transformation through Azure cloud technology. The initiative serves as the enabler for several projects and multiple new services and support for existing tools.

OceanaGold now has reliable remote controls for ventilation, pumps, drills, maintenance, and support, with a solid and reliable infrastructure. Azure Cloud ensures this indispensable high availability and performance stability for plant automation.

To meet growing demands for minerals, OceanaGold strives to increase its productivity and to develop its organization. To operate anywhere in the world, OceanaGold envisions an IT infrastructure that is flexible, easy to scale, and cost-effective, and Azure Cloud delivers.

As a Microsoft Gold Partner with more than 30 years of experience, SoftwareOne was well-placed to navigate OceanaGold’s journey to Azure cloud through the key stages Cloud Advisory, Cloud Landing Zone Architecture Review, and Cloud Migration.