Paradigm Geophysical Limited has announced an initiative to provide its entire integrated suite of products on the Microsoft Windows NT platform. The company expects that the product migration will be completed by the end of the year, with the majority of its ERGOS suite of interpretation and modeling solutions available as beta releases on qualified Windows NT platforms as early as June.

The initiative was launched in response to the Oil & Gas industry's need to "streamline costs and to better integrate the computer systems of geoscience professionals with the rest of their computing organization." The transition to Windows NT will allow for the use of one workstation for both seismic data processing and interpretation as well as office computing applications.

Commenting on the move, Eldad Weiss, Paradigm's president and CEO, said, "As the industry continues to demand improvements in productivity and cost reductions, a unified Windows NT/UNIX strategy would be the most logical solution for IT and business decision-makers. Indeed, we are uniquely qualified to serve in this regard, because our products will permit the co-existence of UNIX and Windows NT solutions, thus providing a smooth transition path. By making this early entry decision on Windows NT, we allow the industry to plan on Paradigm as a partner in their phase-in to this platform as well as co-existence strategies."

Scott Fawcett, manager global energy industry, Microsoft Corp., added, "There is a rational trend across the energy industry to move to Windows NT-based solutions because of the reduced operational costs, increased functionality and ease of integration the Windows platform provides. Paradigm will be the first high-end integrated provider of Oil & Gas E&P solutions to announce that its entire suite of products will be available on Windows NT." Recently, Paradigm announced a new version of SeisX, its regional line-based interpretation system, which supports both UNIX and Windows NT.