WASHINGTON, DC - July 13, 2010 - The Information Store (iStore) today announced Digital Oilfield Express (DOX), the first Digital Oilfield offering delivered online through a subscription price model.  The new service will bring key exploration and production (E&P) business functionality to the thousands of small businesses that comprise the U.S. independent oil and gas producer market.  This announcement was made at Microsoft�s Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) 2010 in Washington, DC.

"American independent producers are the backbone of domestic energy production," said Barry Irani, CEO of iStore.  "Because the vast majority of these companies are small businesses they typically lack the infrastructure and IT expertise of the big players which has kept Digital Oilfield solutions out of reach.  Recognizing that the Digital Oilfield concept would allow these companies to better manage and use exploration and production data, we looked to Microsoft�s Azure Cloud computing platform as the means to deliver essential and affordable technology to this largely underserved market  And because independents produce 68 percent of the oil and 82 percent of the natural gas consumed domestically what is good for them is good for our national energy security."

iStore is creating DOX as a streamlined set of key E&P functions, such as document management and data visualization, utilizing SQL Azure and other components of the Windows Azure Services Platform.  The Azure cloud platform provides Digital Oilfield technology in a software-as-a-service (SaaS) pricing model, eliminating the barriers created by the up-front capital requirements of a large software implementation and requisite hardware platform that can be prohibitive for a smaller company. Delivering Digital Oilfield in the cloud also allows iStore to bypass the long implementation cycles intolerable for smaller enterprises.

"An excellent example of Microsoft cloud momentum in the oil and gas industry partner ecoysystem, iStore envisions a roadmap for E&P companies moving into the cloud," said Simon Witts, corporate vice president, Enterprise & Partner Group (EPG),

 Microsoft. "iStore is leading the migration of data-rich Digital Oilfield applications from the data center to the cloud, which is aimed at creating a cost-effective software-as-a-service pricing model for end users.   Microsoft�s Azure platform enables iStore to bring the power of the Digital Oilfield to a market tier that lacks the IT infrastructure of the larger players, allowing smaller E&P companies to focus on managing their business, not IT infrastructure."

For larger oil & gas businesses the cloud provides an essential fabric for Digital Oilfields of the future on which to combine both software and services, enabling petroleum enterprises to create the mix of online and on-premises data and software that fit the business purpose.

The Microsoft Windows Azure platform addresses the IT requirements of the Digital Oilfield by:

• Leveraging cloud services to act as the inter-organization integration layer
• Providing a secured worldwide distributed run-time environment that is always on and supports auto provisioning and hosting of these services.
• Taking advantage of the built-in services available (compute, storage, access control, etc.) and the common development toolset to seamlessly connect to existing or new on-premise systems.

The Windows Azure platform, consequently, provides oil and gas solution providers and enterprise customers with the ability to extend and deploy their business services into the cloud and enables improved partner integration. These capabilities are poised to deliver greater levels of innovation and cooperation, further digitization of processes across global value chains and high levels of interactivity and engagement with end consumers.

About iStore
iStore helps petroleum companies access exploration and production (E&P) data wherever it resides and presents it in a useful form. As a result, customers improve asset performance, reduce cycle time and maximize return on investment. iStore's Web-based PetroTrek products reach out to technical and financial data and documents wherever they reside delivering cost-effective, data-driven production surveillance & optimization, drilling, GIS, and data management solutions. Founded in 1994, the privately held company’s headquarters are in Houston. For more information, visit www.istore.com.