CUSTOMER STORY Repsol Leads with Innovation through Partnership to Help Support €1 Billion Digital Transformation Goal “Our mission here at Repsol is to be a global energy company that is committed to a sustainable world. Because of that mission, Repsol has created an amazing culture of innovation. As employees, we are encouraged to test and try new ideas that will make us better for our customers, our shareholders, our staff, and the world at large. It is this culture of innovation that led to the successful implementation of Azure NetApp Files for our cloud digital transformation initiative. Azure NetApp Files literally saved our cloud project.”

Juan Pedro Bretti Mandarano Digital Transformation, Senior Engineer, Repsol

About Repsol Repsol S.A. is an energy company based in , power generation, that started simply as an idea. How could , . With over 25,000 employees electricity distribution and trading. Repsol become more ecologically friendly, in 35 countries, it carries out upstream and Repsol is constantly pushing the envelope beyond meeting (and exceeding) their CO2 downstream activities around the world. of what an energy company should requirements; what else could they do that Repsol operates as an energy company, look like. For example, many people are would be good for the planet and good for including exploration and production, surprised to learn that Repsol operates a the community? While Repsol is known for refining, distribution and marketing, car sharing company. It was something creating energy, they wanted to do more.

2 Azure NetApp Files Customer Story: Repsol Digital Transformation with High Performance Compute in the Cloud Cloud Technology Repsol and Microsoft worked together to Beginning in 2016, Repsol defined a cloud plan which applications to move to Azure. strategy with the goal of modernizing They had successfully migrated several services and optimizing IT costs on their workloads when their R&D department path to digitally transforming the company. at the Repsol Technology Laboratory in Madrid saw the opportunity to replace their “Every cloud company wanted to partner on-premises high-performance compute with us,” said Juan Pedro Bretti Mandarano, (HPC) solutions for with Digital Transformation, Senior Engineer, the Azure cloud. Repsol. “Ultimately, we decided to partner with Microsoft. Microsoft’s culture is similar “Moving Oil & Gas modeling applications to ours and they have a vision for the future into Azure would be something very new of cloud technology, coupled with a strong for our industry,” continued Juan Pedro. sense of corporate responsibility that “In fact, we weren’t aware of anyone else parallels our own thinking.” who had successfully done this yet. The need for low latency and high performance for these applications had effectively locked them on-premises. Being one of the first to market would require both investment and risk. But risk is part of our DNA — it is how and why we have grown so successfully.”

3 Azure NetApp Files Customer Story: Repsol Measuring the Impact for the Future It Was the Storage That Was Killing Us But Repsol does not take risk without While there is never a mandate of “you have The Microsoft team presented several strategy. “One of the ways we reduce to make this work” at Repsol, the desire to options, and Repsol tried all of them, risk is that we measure the impact, not make the HPC environment work in Azure but none of them worked to the level the cost,” added Juan Pedro. “Our Oil & was shared across the team. “With HPC you of performance needed. “Because the Gas modeling initiative was one of 150 have several elements. You have compute, software was not smart enough to tell distinct digital transformation projects. graphics, storage, and the network. When us what was impacting the performance We know not all of these projects will we first moved our application over, it challenges, we isolated each of the four be successful, but we also know that for was too slow to ever be implemented key elements — compute, graphics, the ones that do succeed, we will see into production,” said Juan Pedro. storage, network — and quickly discovered a return of €1 Billion FCF by 2022. The it was the storage that was killing us. impact will be realized in more revenues, Even though we were using the fastest reduced costs, greater convenience, storage options from Microsoft at and simpler methods of working." the time, there was no way we would be able to move this application into Azure without something changing.”

4 Azure NetApp Files Customer Story: Repsol Adding NetApp to the Partnership As in most things, timing is everything. As explain that as soon as he understood how The key would be to eliminate the Repsol began their digital transformation Azure NetApp Files worked — that it is latency between storage and compute. initiative in Spain, across the ocean a high-availability infrastructure built on While it sounds simple on paper, in Seattle, Microsoft and NetApp had NetApp technologies directly inside the Juan Pedro explained that there were started to build a new service in Azure Azure data center — he was optimistic. many moving parts to get right. that would fundamentally change “Ultimately, it was the right time, the the cloud for enterprise applications. “We know about NetApp here at Repsol. right people, the right passion, and the The name? Azure NetApp Files. We’re a NetApp customer and trust their right project,” he continued. “There was innovation. We also enjoy working with tremendous excitement across the teams “I received a call one day from my NetApp because we think the same way. because we knew that Azure NetApp colleague at Microsoft Madrid. He was Like us (and like Microsoft), NetApp Files was going to save this project.” excited and said, ‘I have something new brings a test-and-exploration culture. for us to try.’” Juan Pedro went on to Once we decided to try Azure NetApp Files, we assigned a dedicated Microsoft resource who worked directly with the product engineering team at NetApp.”

5 Azure NetApp Files Customer Story: Repsol Faster in the Cloud than On-Premises Into the Future During one of the initial tests, a report that “Going forward, we plan to ‘lift and shift’ Repsol continues to invest in their normally takes 30 days to run completed in many more HPC applications into Azure partnership with Microsoft and NetApp. 24 hours. “Our engineer checked the status NetApp Files. We will also provide global “We have several ideas for new features, and simply assumed that the application access to our remote scientists everywhere and NetApp and Microsoft are really had stopped working overnight. It never in the world. Today, many of our team open to hearing from us,” concluded occurred to him that with Azure NetApp members have to travel to extremely Juan Pedro. “To us, that is the essence of Files the speed was so fast, the simulation remote, rugged locations, carrying very partnership and the key to more innovation was finished,” laughed Juan Pedro. “That heavy and expensive computer equipment and success for all of us in the future.” was our big ‘ah-ha’ moment when we knew that can support the multi-petabytes of we had cracked this thing.” data they need to access. With Azure NetApp Files, we can give them access on virtually any kind of device. It is faster, Discover Azure NetApp Files more collaborative, and more secure.” for yourself.

6 Azure NetApp Files Customer Story: Repsol