NOV Inc. creates new value to deliver secure business services around the clock with Axway

When global energy equipment provider NOV Inc. wanted to create new sources of customer value while enhancing operational efficiency, they turned to Axway to build the next generation of cloud-based, data-driven services without sending costs soaring.

Now with the Amplify API Management Platform, NOV Inc. can build internal and customer-facing services in days, not weeks, reducing costs and creating new revenue streams.

Leaner, more agile operations

NOV Inc. is a leading worldwide provider of equipment and components used in oil and gas drilling and production operations, and of oilfield services to the oil and gas industry.

Shifting supply and demand cycles, slow economic growth, and intensifying geopolitical risks have exerted substantial downward pressure on margins across the oil and gas sector in recent years — and that was before the Covid-19 pandemic.

To be better aligned to thrive in a challenging commercial environment, the energy giant is banking on shaping new, value-added services for its customers and making internal operations leaner and more agile. That means finding ways to collaborate and drawing value from a complex, decentralized hybrid architecture built over years of acquisitions.

NOV Inc.’s long-term goal is to become a cloud-first enterprise. It was determined that an API-driven approach to service delivery had the potential to streamline its journey to the cloud. As well as cutting time-to-market for new services, an API architecture would allow NOV to migrate its back-end systems to the cloud gradually and in a way that was transparent to the new data-driven services.

To accomplish these goals, NOV Inc. selected Amplify API Management Platform. A secure, central, and scalable platform, it speeds up the process of building, testing, deploying, and managing APIs, and includes advanced analytics capabilities that allow businesses to monitor consumption and maintain high levels of availability.

“With the Amplify platform, we’ve removed the bottleneck of routing all API projects through a single corporate team while at the same time maintaining full visibility, governance, and control over the services we’re building,” says Manoj Kona, Middleware Director, Corporate, NOV Inc.

Delivering value-added customer services

Working together with a team from Axway, NOV integrated the Amplify platform in a hybrid-cloud configuration. Deployed in high availability, the solution can divert API traffic automatically in the event of unplanned outages in NOV’s cloud and on-premises data centers, ensuring critical business services are online 24/7.

Kona says he soon knew they had chosen the ideal partner for their transformation project, as the Axway team was always just a phone call away, ready to tackle tough technical challenges.

“Our engagement with Axway was one of the best experiences I’ve had on an implementation project in more than 22 years in the IT industry,” recalls Kona. “The technical depth and breadth of the Axway team truly impressed us, and they went above and beyond to help us complete the work on time and without disruption to the business.”

Thanks to a centralized environment designed to build, test and deploy API services, NOV is breaking down barriers to collaboration and fast-tracking the development of value-added services. For example, even short periods of downtime can drive up NOV Inc.’s customers’ costs substantially, so maximizing the availability of oil and gas assets are a key priority:

“We see great potential in value-added remote-monitoring solutions using Internet-of-Things (IoT) technologies,” says Kona. “We want to harness real-time data feeds from our drilling equipment to offer new high-value services that will help customers carry out preventative maintenance before components fail.”

The company has also designed an API to help integrate data from customer relationship management systems in multiple business units, and surface potential up- and cross-selling opportunities.

Maximizing API speed and reuse

In the past, NOV Inc. delivered APIs through a single, central team in its corporate headquarters. Because developers lacked a central place to share their work, there was no convenient way to check if a component had been built already, leading to significant duplication of effort.

“Amplify Catalog, a central, unified catalog of all our APIs, is a great benefit for developers, who can reuse components that their colleagues have created to cut time-to-market for new internal and customer-facing services. In the past, it could take as long as four weeks to deploy an API — today, it typically takes on average, just two days,” says Kona.

This experience has a direct impact on the bottom line, and mirrors the results of a recent Axway study on API Complexity: Enterprises that build APIs in a matter of days — or even hours — are more likely to launch over 40 new digital projects every year, while enterprises that need weeks or months tend to launch fewer digital projects per year.

And because, according to this same study, APIs can cost nearly US$ 30K on average to build, companies that can reuse APIs more often stand to realize significant savings.

What’s next?

By deploying a central API platform in the hybrid cloud, NOV can now build internal and customer-facing services in days, not weeks, reducing costs and creating new revenue streams. “Although our digital transformation journey is only just beginning, we’ve been getting very positive feedback from the business,” says Kona.

“Our developers are extremely happy that they can create and deliver apps for their users so much more quickly. Greater efficiency in these areas is also great news for our customers, as it will enable us to bring innovative, IoT, mobile, and web-based solutions to market faster.”

Kona concludes: “The API capabilities we’ve gained through our partnership with Axway will be crucial to strengthen our margins, and we plan to continue our close collaboration as we move to the next phase of our digital transformation.”