Case Study: Pacific Drilling achieves 400% increase in tool time and 99.9% offshore uptime with Oracle SD‑WAN

Oracle SD-WAN enables Pacific Drilling’s ‘Rig of the Future’ today

Pacific Drilling, a global offshore drilling company, faced a severe industry downturn that drove vessel day rates from $1M in 2012 to below $250K in 2019. The company also contended with an oversaturated drillship market, tight CapEx and OpEx, and fragmented IT, OT, security, communications and video systems that made it difficult to extract commercial value from data.

By deploying Oracle SD‑WAN together with Oceaneering’s satellite‑agnostic SAIL link, Pacific Drilling consolidated IT/OT communications, lowered capital and operating costs, and enabled always‑on, low‑latency connectivity. The integrated solution improved safety and automation, delivered market differentiation, produced a 400% increase in tool time for activities like job safety analysis and common operating picture, achieved ~99.9% offshore data‑center uptime, and delivered a substantial bandwidth uplift (video: 100×).

Pacific Drilling

Corey Thompson

Chief Information Officer