FutureOn secures investment from Bentley

Norwegian software company FutureOn, which works with an expanding range of global energy companies, has announced that it has secured an investment from the Bentley Acceleration Fund and established a strategic partnership with US-based Bentley Systems to accelerate the digitalisation of the oil and gas industry.

FutureOn and Bentley Systems will combine FutureOn’s field design application (FieldAP) and its API-centric collaboration platform (FieldTwin) with Bentley’s iTwin platform to provide their customers what they say is a next-generation digital twin solution capable of driving design methodologies in upstream project development for the next decade. Both FutureOn and Bentley platforms use open web standards to facilitate complex integration and customisation, and the combined offerings are already being implemented in exploration and production workflows.

“This is a significant milestone for FutureOn, which will greatly drive the growth of our business by extending its reach,” said FutureOn CEO Paal Roppen. “Also, while we will work closely with Bentley, we will maintain our neutrality as an independent software vendor with a clear mandate to provide our customers a fully open and standards-driven digital platform. This flexibility supports our customers’ desire for remote collaborative decision-making at a critical time for the oil and gas industry.”

FutureOn emerged from the 3D visualisation agency Xvision, with over 20 years of visual engineering experience specifically in the oil and gas subsea domain. In 2019 FutureOn’s FieldAP received the OTC Spotlight on New Technology Award for best software innovation in the oil and gas industry. Most recently, the company launched cloud-based data platform FieldTwin, which offers centralised API integrations to many of the leading engineering simulation and data analysis tools. When combined with FieldTwin, FieldAP enables cross-discipline remote collaboration for design and development of subsea digital twins.

“FutureOn has grown quickly and taken an industry-leading position in very short time thanks to bold moves like this,” said Roppen. “Today digitalisation is more important than ever for the oil and gas industry as challenging market conditions persist. Innovative and disruptive technologies such as those we develop alongside Bentley will fill an emerging void.”

“We are excited for this new opportunity to collaborate with FutureOn to provide advanced digital twin technology for the oil and gas industry, and especially for the addition of subsea expertise,” said Ken Adamson, Bentley Vice president, Design Integration. “Combining our design, modelling and analysis experience with FutureOn’s data management and visualisation acumen to help build subsea digital twins will enable our users to further enhance their engineering performance, operations and profitability.”