The upstream players of the oil and gas industry need an easier and more compact computing environment to prevent them struggling with information overload, concluded a new study carried out by Microsoft Corporation and Accenture.The results released today at the Society of Petroleum Engineers’ Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition (ATCE) in Florence, show that the oil and gas industry hopes that IT standards, service-oriented architectures, cloud computing and social media will facilitate the upstream computing collaboration.
The Microsoft and Accenture Upstream Oil & Gas Computing Trends Survey 2010, considered over 172 upstream oil and gas pros from national, international and independent oil companies, as well as service and supply companies worldwide.
The results show that 44 percent of respondents, have difficulties having their work done, because of the upstream data jam.
They usually said that they have waste a lot of time and resources to find information – 44% and they complained that the data they find is not structured, so it's hard to capture and archive it - 44% as well.
Also, results suggest that information gets stuck in individual repositories and is not easily shared across disciplines (43%) and 35% of the companies say that there is too much data that is redundant and/or unnecessary.
57% of the respondents say that the most valuable asset in enhanced computing is a more extensive upstream IT standard, another 57 percent say that it is a service-oriented architecture approach, cloud computing (30 percent), and social media (30 percent).
Still, most of the companies did not adopt these technologies, even though for most employees it would translate into a higher job performance.
Since June 2010, when the Microsoft Upstream Reference Architecture Initiative was launched, six industry players have announced their participation in the initiative — Esri, Idea Integration Corp., Neofirma Inc., NetApp, Tata Consultancy Services Ltd. and The Information Store Inc. — bringing the overall number of initiative participants to 25.
Ali Ferling, managing director, Worldwide Oil & Gas Industry for Microsoft said that “the sheer volume of upstream information produced by today’s digital oilfield environment has prompted oil and gas professionals to call for systems and processes that drive better decision making and job performance.
“Information overload in the form of siloed, redundant and unstructured data often hinders proactive operations and collaboration.
“Fortunately, next-generation information technologies are available today and the Microsoft Upstream Reference Architecture Initiative is set to create a more efficient upstream computing environment,” he added.
“Of course the effective deployment of these technologies is critical, and unfortunately there are few great examples in our industry,” added Johan Nell, upstream global lead, Energy Industry Group, Accenture.
He stressed “that business-problem-driven solutions based on simplified, consistent architectures are key.”
Ferling explained that in order “to ensure consistent information and application integration, the industry will need close industry alignment among multiple solution providers.
“This collaboration will allow upstream companies to streamline business processes, onboard projects quickly, and be more agile and flexible in their upstream operations.”
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