Until now, the seismic exploration business has had a sequential nature; a data refinement flow from acquisition measurement to seismic processing and geological interpretation. Increased competition in the seismic service arena, demanding faster and faster turnaround and increased quality of data, requires using tools from processing and interpretation up front in the acquisition phase. Our aim is to improve and streamline the data-refinement process towards higher quality data requires a big improvement in interoperability between our systems. One of the biggest constraints we have to face is that the various products have been and are developed more or less independently within the company's various product-lines at different sites, reflecting different cultures, skills and software and hardware solutions.

We see OMG's Business Objects as the best solution too improve our interoperability, because it will:

• Lift the data-modelling exercise up to right level of abstraction
• Define a focus point for interface negotiations between the people from the different domains.

In this project we will define one or two pilot applications that operate in the borderland between seismic acquisition and processing, utilising a shared model with Business Objects to achieve interoperability.