14 DAY TRIAL // There seems to be a consensus among professionals within global chemical and oil refining companies that a reference architecture is needed in order to drive IT interoperability within the industries as well as enhance collaboration.
Microsoft has already been hard at work on an information technology (IT) reference architecture which the company envisions as tackling all the issues impacting the efficiency of chemical and refining companies.
The Microsoft Chemical Reference Architecture (ChemRA) initiative launched on September 20, 2011 at the MESA 2011 North America Conference, the result of a collaboration between the software giant and a number of partners including: Accenture, Aspen Technology, Invensys Operations Management, OSIsoft, PROS Holdings, and Siemens.
By leveraging ChemRA, customers will be able to take advantage of interoperable IT solutions, improved collaboration and sharing as well as business process automation, all on a secure and reliable foundation.
“The need for collaboration among chemicals professionals is great, driven by a push for faster innovation and the pressing need for knowledge transfer from retiring workers,” explained Ellyn Foltz, managing director, Worldwide Process Manufacturing Industries, Microsoft.
“ChemRA provides a response to the business and technology challenges our customers and partners face today. We are helping our customers more effectively interact with and share information to compete and succeed in today’s dynamic global marketplace.”
127 professionals from the chemical and oil refining industries were surveyed by the Aberdeen Group for Microsoft and Accenture, with a massive 97% expressing concerns over the current inflexibility of IT.
“Our research highlighted one of the main benefits of cloud as enabling better collaboration between global locations,” added Kevin Prouty, research director, Enterprise Applications, Aberdeen.
“With all the money poured into collaboration processes and systems in the past, it may be something as simple as cloud computing that will finally drive collaboration into all the operational nooks and crannies of chemical companies.”
According to the Redmond company, ChemRA was conceived with a number of principles at heart, including natural user experience, application interoperability, enhanced collaboration, business insight and solid IT infrastructure.