The oil and gas industry being one of the primary industries in the energy sector has collected and stored abundant data over the years, but has failed to aptly use it. A study on sensor rigs confirms that only 1% of data collected from thousands of separate data points was found relevant in decision making. Considering this as a major loophole, improvised cloud computing can play an important role in enhancing business analytics and streamlining data storage for organizations in the energy sector.
Cloud computing in the oil and gas industry offers similar benefits that it does to other sectors. It helps businesses to manage, store, and filter their data on remote server systems by outsourcing to a data center. Consequently exempting them from the hassle of storing large amounts of data on on-premise servers. After conclusive studies, the oil and gas companies have also outlined the best-suited applications for cloud migrations and help evaluate different functions like infrastructure, support, compute, and more for critical technology intervention. The result- greater ROI and acceleration in cloud adoption.
The market forecast and segmentation- cloud adoption in the oil and gas industry
Research suggests that the cloud application market will experience a growth of 14.25% in the next decade with an estimated evaluation of USD 15 billion by 2028. Lower operational costs and data encryption play catalysts in the growth of private cloud adoption. Likewise, the major drivers for the oil and gas applications market are the secure storage of real-time data, swift access to the data extracted from downstream, upstream, and midstream activities, reduced operational costs, and increased demand for private cloud for data encryption. Considering data security as a major concern, the government is implementing strict regulations which can hamper the market growth for cloud applications in the upcoming years.
The oil and gas cloud application market segmentation is done on the following basis:
- Component: segmentation based on solutions and services
- Operations: segmentation based on downstream, upstream, and midstream activities
- Deployment Type: segmentation based on public cloud and private cloud
Benefits of cloud computing in the oil and gas industry
In recent years leading companies like ExxonMobil and BP have made a switch from in-house data storage to cloud-based services. Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services are among a few cloud-based platforms where oil and gas companies have heavily invested.
Let us go through some major cloud computing benefits in the oil and gas industry:
- Improved agility: Cloud computing enhances a company’s agility, helping them make swift decisions. New models can be implemented in a relatively shorter time frame because of effective data usage.
- Cost reduction: Cloud adoption saves companies from investing huge one-time costs to buy enormous servers and dealing with space constraints. Data centers have all the necessary expertise required for keeping remote servers up and running with reduced chances of a power outage and cost mitigation clauses in the contract if servers go down, which significantly improves productivity.
- Enhanced security and compliance: Unlike early years in cloud computing where data security was a vital concern, data centers now have hugely invested in their security services by effectively placing state-of-the-art defense against physical and online attacks. They have also emphasized expanding their security team that helps to manage security compliance for the customer, taking away the need for hiring in-house qualified security employees.
- Increased efficiency: Supply chain management, customer data/records, documents, and more are all in one location which provides easy access to anyone who needs them. Cloud-based tools like Google Docs help multiple people work on the same document at the same time while being in different locations, which can improve efficiency.
- Reduced impact on the environment: Oil and gas companies have always been under the radar for harming the environment. They now need alternatives for reducing their environmental impact. This is where cloud computing plays a hero. Datacenters focus on optimizing the use of energy and green technology initiatives to ensure the same.
The bottom line
Oil and gas companies are increasingly adopting cloud technology because it provides flexibility, adaptability, improved real-time data gathering, and opens up a plethora of possibilities for the future.
Organizations are in complete awe of the consistent digital experience that cloud has brought to them as a user. It has opened doors for a complete digital transformation, be it introducing new work models, scaling up, or being inclined towards a multi-cloud digital environment. As an organization understanding the gravity and potential of the technology, we offer a stream of services where we consult, transform, scale, and build the platform for our customers.
Our key differentiators
At HCLTech we provide a unique and customized solution independent of the industry limitations that enables our customers to have an integrated yet distinctive experience. A few differentiators of our solution are:
- Digital-scale experience with a unique cloud-native lab-based execution model
- Dedicated ecosystem business units
- Vertical-aligned cloud solutions
- Engineering talent with hybrid cloud expertise
- Automation and AI-based HCLTech IPs for accelerated deliveries
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