WellPoint Systems presented “The Digital Oilfield: Is It Hitting Rock Bottom?” today at the Houstonian Hotel, where Catherine Madden, Senior Research Analyst for IDC Insights, discussed trends in the oil and gas digital field and challenges companies are facing.
The underlying question of more and more oil and gas companies today is, Is the digital oil field dead?
Madden’s answer is simply, no.
“The digital oil field is critical to the industry’s achievement now and in the future. How it is viewed is shifting, but it’s not dead,” said Madden. She went on to explain that the post-recession industry has been making a cautious recovery, but most fundamentals are getting stronger, even in the shadows of the latest business challenges such as the changing environment, human capital, collaboration, data management, and intelligent energy.
Madden emphasized the comparison of what the digital oil field looked like before and what it has become; there is now an increased focus on industry standardization and real time data exchange. She says that standards enable integration across all domains and facilitate the management of assets through the life cycle, which has brought recent success to companies like ExxonMobil.
“With embedded IT into business units, it is not just a cost center; it is an efficient collaboration,” affirms Madden. Her charge to the industry is to find a way to connect your organization through the improvement of integrative data and open standards.
Even in times like these, where the oil and gas community is recovering from tragedy in the Gulf and pressure on IT is greater, the digital oil field is alive and necessary.
“You have to have systems that optimize data collected,” Madden said, “Data can be your best friend.”
