Delphi helps Conwy Valley Systems to maintain market leadership, make PETROG future-proof, enhance productivity by 2.5 times and deliver cost savings to customers
Maidenhead, U.K.– August, 2014 – Conwy Valley Systems Limited (CVS), the North Wales-based geoscience and geotechnical services company, has successfully future-proofed and maintained the market leadership position of its flagship PETROG software over the last 20 years by designing it exclusively using development tool Embarcadero Delphi. PETROG was developed to fill a gap in the market for a digital petrography system and today is used by oil and gas, steel, coal and concrete manufacturing companies across 44 countries.
The flexibility delivered by Delphi has enabled CVS to quickly develop the next generation of PETROG and meet changing customer demand. For example, a key feature of PETROG is its integration with users’ microscopes and cameras to provide the ability to work with video images in real-time. When initially developed, the PETROG video system was designed to integrate with high resolution analogue cameras. When digital devices were introduced, CVS easily developed the software to support all the major digital microscopes and camera manufacturers.
Crucially, CVS has been able to evolve the product without the need to completely re-write the software code. The PETROG system today comprises more than 200,000 lines of bespoke Delphi code and much of it hasn’t needed to be changed in over 20 years.
“We did some early work with Microsoft's Visual Basic, which enabled rapid prototyping for processing scientific data, but it was simply too slow,” explains Mark Gorst, Co-founding Director of Conwy Valley Systems. “When we evaluated Delphi, we realised that moving to it as the core programming language was a no-brainer. We haven’t looked back since – Delphi has been continuously evovled and has taken PETROG from Windows 3.1 to Windows 8, from 16 bit to 64 bit processing. Even today it positions us perfectly in the market and is without a doubt remains the best way forward for the future development of PETROG.”
CVS is now also utilising Embarcadero’s next generation application development platform, FireMonkey, to enable PETROG to support the Windows and Mac platforms using a single code base and meet specific customer demand.
While PETROG is an off-the-shelf product, CVS also undertakes bespoke software development projects for customers. Delphi has enhanced the PETROG development team’s productivity by 2.5 times, resulting in cost savings for customers. Some large software development projects constitute more than 700,000 lines of bespoke Delphi code.
“PETROG is a great example of the longevity that software products can enjoy using Delphi,” observed Jason Vokes, Senior Director of Marketing and Technologies International. “Delphi offers robust rapid application development capability, reducing the overall time for prototyping and so allowing enterprises to quickly take solutions to market. The return on investment delivered by Delphi is unparalleled – PETROG is evidence of that.”
Petrography is a branch of geology that focuses on detailed descriptions of rocks. The recipient of the Queen’s Award for Excellence in Innovation, PETROG assists petrographers at all the petrographic stages, from data capture through to final reporting. Users of PETROG range from individual consultants, service companies, goverment and academic users through to global energy corporations.
About Embarcadero Technologies
Embarcadero Technologies, Inc. is a leading provider of award-winning tools for application developers and database professionals so they can design systems right, build them faster and run them better, regardless of their platform or programming language. Ninety of the Fortune 100 and an active community of more than three million users worldwide rely on Embarcadero products to increase productivity, reduce costs, simplify change management and compliance, and accelerate innovation. Founded in 1993, Embarcadero is headquartered in San Francisco, with offices located around the world: www.embarcadero.com.
# # #
Press Contacts:
Vidushi Patel
Paratus Communications
+44 7958 474 632
[email protected]
Martina Prinz
Embarcadero Senior EMEA Marketing Manager
+496103979131
[email protected]