Industry context

Database solutions in energy and utilities

We design and migrate database platforms so transaction systems stay available and recoverable, with every move tested before it happens in production.

Technician seating a fibre patch cable in a network switch

Database work covers the engines that hold your transaction data: high availability, backup and recovery, performance and migration between platforms. We assess the current estate, design the target topology and move workloads in planned windows with a tested rollback.

Energy and utility companies run long-lived assets where reliability and safety come first, and their control systems fall under OT security requirements. Field crews, control room operators and asset managers need changes scheduled within approved shutdowns and maintenance seasons, under HSE rules. Data residency rules often decide where a database may run and where its backups may go, such as data classification policies for government and regulated data in the UAE and the NCA Cloud Cybersecurity Controls in Saudi Arabia.

We hand over with runbooks and training, and can stay on under agreed service levels.

Alongside sector regulation, we often map delivery evidence to cross-industry baselines such as the UAE Information Assurance Regulation issued by TDRA, the NCA Essential Cybersecurity Controls in Saudi Arabia and the NIST Cybersecurity Framework, which many risk reviewers already use.

How the work is organised

From design to stable operation, with the evidence operations, HSE and regulators ask for.

  • Estate assessment

    An inventory of databases, versions, sizes and dependencies, with the applications each one supports.

  • Availability and recovery

    Replication, backup and restore designed against agreed recovery targets, and tested by restoring real data.

  • Migration and tuning

    Schema and data migration rehearsed on a copy of production, followed by query and index tuning under realistic load.

  • OT security and sector rules

    We design around OT security requirements such as the UAE Information Assurance Regulation and the Dubai Electronic Security Center's standards, or NCA OTCC in Saudi Arabia, with IEC 62443 for control systems, and keep the compliance evidence your regulator and HSE function review.

  • Security and encryption

    Encryption at rest and in transit, key management and access reviews for administrators.

  • Operations handover

    Monitoring, patching and restore runbooks handed to your database team with training.

Checks before you start

A database programme is ready to start when the applications on each database and their recovery needs are known.

  • The OT security controls that apply to you have been identified.
  • Application owners have agreed the recovery targets and maintenance windows for each database.
  • Security and compliance have agreed where data and backups may be hosted.

Plan database solutions in energy and utilities

Share your current systems, compliance themes and timeline. We will return a phased plan, a staffing model and a risk register for your stakeholders to review.

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