My take: Cloud migration drives AI revival at Enbridge
When Enbridge experienced rapid expansion, tech leader Joseph Gollapalli explains how the energy company used cloud adoption to manage the growing complexity of its tech footprint.
By Joseph Gollapalli, director of cloud, IT ops, and data at Enbridge Inc.
Enbridge is a transportation company that plays a pivotal role in North America's energy landscape, transporting 30% of the crude oil and 20% of the natural gas consumed in the United States. We’re also making significant strides in renewable energy as the largest natural gas utility in North America, servicing more than 7 million customers—and we’re continuing to grow, with the announcement of recent acquisitions.
From 2015 to 2020, Enbridge experienced unprecedented growth due to mergers and acquisitions, resulting in a 150% increase in our technology footprint. If we had continued at the same pace, we would have had to deal with an additional 50% increase in the forecasted footprint, which would entail increased costs, a complex technology landscape, and workload challenges. We had to manage and scale multiple platforms, applications, and data centers while relying on legacy systems that posed security and performance risks. We realized we needed to transform our technology landscape to support our business goals and enable innovation. To address these challenges, we embarked on a journey to the cloud that aimed to simplify IT, reduce operational risk, enhance business agility, and improve operational efficiencies.
Our journey began with a strategic focus on reducing technical debt and enhancing application reliability through cloud adoption. The results were promising: We consolidated 13 data centers, with 74% of our workloads now running in the cloud. This transition allowed us to achieve a 66% reduction in our carbon footprint. Furthermore, we reduced critical service outages by 70%. Enbridge met new regulatory demands by reducing patching cycle times1 by 67%. In total, we migrated 594 applications to the cloud, including essential workforce productivity tools. This effort not only reduced operational risk but also established a highly reliable hybrid environment. We decommissioned 9,050 servers, addressing outdated technology and achieving an impressive availability rate of 99.5%.
Our cloud migration also harnessed the power of our data and transformed our business intelligence. We migrated our siloed data to a cloud-based data marketplace, where we created a data catalog and implemented data quality standards. We applied advanced data governance and security measures to protect our data assets, enabling us to democratize data access and help our business users make data-driven decisions. Furthermore, we used cloud-native artificial intelligence and machine learning tools to generate insights and predictions from our data, such as demand forecasting, asset optimization, and anomaly detection.
Our cloud migration was not just about enhancing reliability and reducing environmental impact; it was also about transforming our business operations. We reduced infrastructure deployment times from a sluggish four months on premises to a mere four hours in the cloud. Additionally, we expedited “day 1” integration times, reducing them by 30%. This ensured we could adapt to emerging business demands and cope with increasing regulatory pressures, particularly in cybersecurity. Our infrastructure costs, which would have otherwise risen by 52%, instead reduced by 50%, alongside substantial savings in network bandwidth. This migration enhanced our operational efficiency and helped save significant costs.
Crucially, we invested in upskilling our workforce, with 60% of our technology information services employees now possessing cloud training and agile development skills. This transformation enabled us to attract and retain talent proficient in emerging technologies with which job seekers want to work.
Our cloud journey also helped us in our sustainability journey. Enbridge has set an environmental target of achieving zero emissions by 2050. By reducing the number of data centers from 17 in 2015 to just four today and shifting workloads to cloud data centers powered by renewable energy, we have so far reduced our total carbon footprint by 66%.
One of the most exciting outcomes of our cloud journey is the revival of AI at Enbridge. While AI has been part of our operations for a few years in various forms, including pipeline inspection gauges, leak detection systems, and corrosion monitoring systems, our migration to the cloud has unlocked new possibilities for AI applications. These AI solutions have the potential to enhance our operations, improve safety, elevate the customer experience, and enhance our environmental performance.
Capitalizing on our cloud, DevOps, and data capabilities, we set up a generative AI platform, a cutting-edge AI solution. We leveraged AI-powered code assistant copilots to accelerate our delivery, driving innovation and efficiency. In addition, we are rolling out a productivity application copilot—an AI tool to help staff work smarter—to 300 users.
AI is not merely a buzzword for us; it is a crucial enabler for the energy transition and a catalyst for innovation.