Hermes Data Communications International specialises in delivering telephony services to parts of the world where most other companies will not visit. Its engineers provide telephony services to oil and gas companies in hard-to-reach locations or extremely harsh conditions, such as an oil rig on the Caspian Sea or a drilling field in the middle of a desert where “temperatures hit 50° in the desert and air conditioning does not even touch the rooms,” says Gary Steer, technical director at Hermes.

The UK-based company works with oil and gas companies such as Shell, BP and Exxon Mobil, as well as smaller providers, such as Nations Energy, a private Canadian company with oil fields in Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan. Yet whatever the organisation’s size, the demands on its communications systems are the same: they need reliability, security, support and ease of use. And if an oil company is not receiving these benefits, it is not averse to abandoning the investment in favour of a better solution elsewhere.

For instance, Nations Energy already had in place an expensive PBX system, which was 18 months old and was not flexible enough to allow integration in to the global network, so the company decided to throw it out. “Oil companies want things to be right,” explains Steer. “They are used to listening to contractors and taking their advice.”
In its place, Hermes recommended Nations Energy install technology from Siemens Communications, specifically its HiPath3700 or HiPath3300 communications systems, depending on the size of each office or rig site. The head office in Kazakhstan, for instance, is served by HiPath3700 and has more than 200 extensions. Offices in the US, Calgary and London also use the HiPath technology.

Out in the field in Kazakhstan, engineers are using VoIP functionality through the HiPath platform. Although there are several collection points or pump stations at the site, Steer points out that it is “too big to run wires for one engineer, so we have enabled VoIP to these locations using Siemens’ HG gateways.”

“The voice systems are connected using QSIG (an ISDN-based protocol),” adds Steer. Hermes also uses Voice over Satellite at Nations Energy. It is an expensive way of transmitting voice calls, but one that is fairly common in the oil and gas industry in locations where IP networks cannot be implemented.

The HiPath platform offers support for multiple standards, which means that voice calls can be compressed to minimise bandwidth – and therefore cost – and avoid latency issues when using Voice over Satellite. “It gives maximum voice quality with minimum latency, so Nations Energy do not know that they are talking over satellite,” says Steer. “It also means that an independent oil company, such as Nations Energy, can have the same voice functionality as a much larger company at relatively low cost.”

“In the long term, they have benefited from a common platform that everyone understands, is easy to use and reliable, which is invaluable in remote locations,” continues Steer. Features of the system from an end-user standpoint include caller ID, voicemail and a user display. “The killer application from our point of view is that we can direct dial to any desk in the organisation using four digits,” says Steer. “An oil company might be drilling in the middle of the desert, but it expects the same functionality as it has in its New York office in order to ensure the supply of geographical data back and forth. We have live information so geologists can watch in real time the drill six miles underground and call to say if the engineer should cease drilling at any time.”

From a manager’s perspective, Siemens’ HiPath platform also makes the entire system much easier to administer. “Remote access is a major selling point as we can control all PBXs from here,” says Steer. “This makes it easier to do Moves, Adds and Changes (MACs) and switch one desk to another or even one location to another.”

“The ability to generate call logs is a big benefit as well,” continues Steer. “We can see all remote extensions going over QSIG and can bill customers and generate call log information for customers off site.”

The previous telephony system Nations Energy had in place suffered from poor technical support and an inflexible upgrade path. However, the Siemens equipment is up-to-date and flexible. “We can change it in five years’ time without any problems,” adds Steer. Furthermore, there are no lengthy lead times in delivering to remote parts of the world – Hermes works with Siemens' distributor, Rocom, who always have everything they need in stock and can even offer next day delivery.

Above all, Hermes can trust Siemens HiPath communications system and recommend the technology to its oil and gas customers because it knows that come rain or shine, the equipment will not only work, but offer the depth of functionality a desk-based employee receives. “It is very reliable, which we depend on, given that a lot of our equipment and engineers are based in very harsh conditions,” says Steer.

“One of the challenges that we specifically have to deal with in the industry is the high expectation of service that our customers expect,” he continues. “They want the highest quality of service and do not want to hear excuses, such as ‘the software is incompatible’, so we have to absorb that pain.”

Given their remote locations and the fact they offer support across multiple time zones, Hermes’ service engineers benefit highly from the HiPath platform, finding it easy to use, install and support. “Siemens technology has always been very flexible and there is a lot of backward compatibility in their systems,” says Steer.

Steer also believes that using HiPath communications technology has reduced costs because the system is more reliable, offers the ability to configure multiple protocols and gives customers desk-to-desk functionality.

For more information, visit www.siemens.co.uk