All fuel data of Australia, central and up to date

Sometimes we are a bit jealous of our Australian colleagues. For example, when we read the success story at ATOM. With the help of Rapid Circle, ATOM now has all fuel measurement data in one place, which is also continuously updated. A powerful solution using Azure. How was this done? You can read about it in this case.

About Australian Terminals Operations Management (ATOM)

Safe, reliable and effective. That is what Australian Terminals Operations Management (ATOM) stands for. ATOM operates and maintains bulk fuel terminals throughout Australia. Terminals are storage facilities with pumps, pipelines, storage tanks and processing equipment. ATOM specialises in managing all aspects of the activities of these places, ranging from the storage and handling of liquid bulk fuels to maintenance and engineering services. That this is safe, reliable and effective for them goes without saying.

How to connect the data from all fuel stock measurements?

You can imagine that ATOM collects a lot of information. That is why they needed a central repository for all data. This makes it possible for stakeholders to view reports and data insights from multiple operational systems. Fuel stock measurements from 14 terminals across Australia were tracked from minute to minute. We integrated these to provide ATOM technicians with a single, continuously updated overview of inventory. A huge amount of data that had to be connected.

Continuous insight and clear overview

We quickly came up with a solution: Microsoft Azure Data Factory. This provides continuous insight into ATOM’s fuel stock measurements. ATOM already had Microsoft Office 365 and Azure service licenses. This made it easy for them to integrate Microsoft Azure Data Factory into their current IT environment.

A Microsoft Azure SQL server (PaaS), or data ‘warehouse’, was set up on ATOM’s Azure tenant. It hosts three Azure SQL databases designed to capture data from on-premises servers according to a timed schedule. The information is then stored in an Azure SQL ‘Database as a Service’ (DBaaS).

You want to visualise all that data in a beautiful, clear way. We produced Power BI reports to provide data insights through a direct query connection with the associated data sources. With Power BI, we were able to show ATOM technicians a continuously updated fuel inventory report. The reports are refreshed every 15 minutes to read the most current data available in the data warehouse.

Azure Data Factory is a powerful and flexible cloud computing tool. By expanding the existing fuel inventory solution, we were able to integrate multiple operational systems with Microsoft Azure. With the data now stored in Azure, ATOM has a range of cloud tools to analyse their data.

Scaling up and expanding

The result is impressive. ATOM now has a series of integrated reports that are continuously updated. They use it daily to work more productively and gain insight into possible improvements to ATOM’s operations.

Cloud computing has opened up many possibilities for integrating data between a company’s systems. ATOM now has a cloud-based solution that can be scaled as business needs change. With Power BI reporting, ATOM’s technicians spend less time performing manual data analysis in Excel.

In the future, we will continue to work with Australian Terminal Operations Management (ATOM) to expand the capabilities of their data warehouse, which pulls data from Myosh in JSON format. This will allow ATOM to view both historical and live data through Power BI. We are looking forward to it.

Do you want to know how your organisation can be improved with Microsoft Azure? Feel free to contact us.