The Energy, Resources & Utilities Industry

Technology Trends that Drive Business Strategies & Growth

There has been a paradigm shift in the way the Oil & Gas sector especially is operating
today due to various factors ranging from increasing market volatility, escalating cost of
operations, decline of oil prices, retiring experienced professionals, stringent regulatory
requirements to name a few

Oil prices have been declining steadily since the last few years. This is not new for this
sector which has seen these kind of cyclic changes.

The primary cost of almost any production is energy. If Energy prices are falling, it may be
detrimental to energy companies but it's materially beneficial to everyone and everything
else.

Therefore a need for Oil Companies to realise the need and adapt and the time is NOW.

They need to harness new technological advances-Digitalization, AI, Robotics, IoT and
Analytics, to squeeze out, extract the most and ensure higher production volumes with less
investment from existing resources.

Organizations today must focus on new ways to modernize their business processes and
align it with the latest and advanced technology trends. IT Services providers that can
understand the Business problem, build an Application and Solution with the end user
experience in mind would have a great edge over the others.

Analysing the Economic and Key Business Drivers

-Ageing Refinery Assets

-Risk Management & Reliability is a Need-Its now or Never

-Decision Support systems & Performance

-Cost Reduction pressures, Shorter Product Lifecycles

Lets look at the Top technology trends. Its reasonable to expect the following

IT trends to make a big impact on the way Organizations perform across the Energy,
Resources, Utilities and the Process Manufacturing domains.

Advanced & Predictive analytics: Assets need to run at their peak

performance.Organisations are forced to use the above data to draw insights and
inferences about equipment and to accurately predict outages before they occur.
There is a need to analyze trends and predict maintenance failures.
 Mobility/Digital Enterprise: Remote equipment monitoring through devices that
allow data collection and communication wirelessly and remotely is the need of
the hour. Real time monitoring is critical. There is an urgent need to mobilize the
Industry and create a digital extension.

Cloud computing: The cloud is turning out to be most reliable to allow multiple users
to access share and analyze data. Cloud Computing will be the future of Oil & Gas
software, if the security issues are taken care of. By 2018, more than 60% of
enterprises will have at least half of their infrastructure on cloud-based platforms

Big data: Information on the fly and timely Decision making is the Key.Humungous
amounts of data needs to be churned from Plant Operations, Maintenance and
Production, Resources. Key Performance Indicators need to be analyzed in real time
from this structured and unstructured data into insights that can transform Business

Smart Machines using Sensor technology: With this new technology, remote
operations, management is possible .By creating a network of these, real time
critical data provide reliable insights of performance and condition of equipments.

IT Services Organizations need to build Business Solutions around these Trends.

Lets take a look at some of the key Solutions and themes that can be deployed by
IT Services Organizations which would help Industry increase their competitiveness,
reduce costs, increase efficiency and attain higher productivity and performance.

Business Solutions
Enterprise Asset Performance Management & Reliability Management Solutions

Enables the user to predict and prevent failures by analyzing existing data. The key is to
assess Risk proactively, deploy a Risk-based, Optimized Asset management plan to
develop, manage, execute and evaluate with Mitigation as the end point. Companies can
focus on predicting future problems to prevent them from occurring, a method that can
result in substantial cost and time savings. There is now a growing need to monitor the
entire ecosystem to ensure reliability.

Typical Solutions

Solutions across Failure Elimination, Mechanical Integrity, Asset Strategy and Safety
Reliability Analytics, Risk Based Inspection, RCM and Asset Strategy Optimization, Operator
Rounds are the need of the hour

Real Time systems-Remote Operations Management

Enable intelligent systems that utilise sensor technology, combine capability of Networking,
Mobility, and Data and perform Analytics, derive trends and allow access, process this
information on the Cloud and provide meaningful dashboards to the Management and
Clients. This is especially a need for Global Organizations with multiple locations across
geographies.

The use of drones for gathering information from difficult terrains, for photography and
remote sensing, stockpile, mine site mapping, remote operating centers across the entire
mining value chain-all of these are focused on driving , cost savings and efficiencies. The
insights derived from the data volumes generated from the use of these technologies will
result in faster and more informed business decisions.

Typical Solutions

Remote Monitoring of O & M operations of Utilities, Refinery Equipments, and Role

based Performance & Predictive Diagnostic Dashboards, CEOs/Refinery Dashboards

IOT

Operational and information technology are beginning to converge. New emerging and
enabling technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT) have become more affordable
and offer transformational ways to get real time insights into machine performance.

This increased affordability can be adopted by Oil companies to transform their Enterprise
Asset Management systems to increase uptime. The oil and gas industry has been an
early adopter of sensor technology. Sensors can collect real time and large amounts of
data which can be synthesised and analysed to impact the operations of their business.
Our devices are getting smarter, they have built-in intelligent sensors. As machine-to-
machine technology gathers speed, it would help Organizations and businesses around
the globe automate processes and simplify operations.

Typical Solutions

Smart Metering/Grid, Intelligent Transport systems, Fleet Tracking, Remote Monitoring

of Critical Plant equipments, Pipelines, Cloud based SaaS enabled Access Control and
Security systems are examples

DIGITAL ENTERPRISE-Mobility

Smart device proliferation and easy data access are revamping traditional enterprise IT.

The customer today is digitally savvy and they are compelling Organizations to leverage
mobility to provide them with Anytime, Anywhere Access.

Enterprise Mobility Solutions that are able to bridge the communication, application and
sensing platforms have an edge and can provide field Engineers with data on the go.
Organizations that build enterprise mobile-based solutions across all the functions of
energy companies are likely to reap benefits from these opportunities.

The MENA digital transformation market was valued at 897.0 Mn in 2013 and is projected to
account for US$ 2,398.3 Mn by 2020
Typical Solutions

Mobility Solutions for EAM, Inspection, Condition Monitoring, Materials Management,

Fuel Management, Mobile Analytics, Real time surveillance, Field Operations
Management, Data capture. Operator Driven rounds is another new exciting area.

CLOUD SERVICES

Cloud Services and Solutions will be a disruptive game changer. The public cloud services
market in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is projected to grow 17.1 percent
in 2015 to total $851 million, up from an estimated $727 million in 2014, according to
Gartner, Inc. Software as a service (SaaS), the largest segment of the cloud services
market in MENA, is expected to grow 25 percent in 2015 to $205.7 million.

Cloud computing platforms will play a big role in creating the next generation of intelligent,
software-defined machines that are operable and controllable entirely from centralized,
remote locations. Cloud Computing will be the future of ERU Software and will help
Organizations become agile and intelligent digital business players better.

IaaS, PaaS, SaaS Solutions are driving Enterprise Business today. Many developers of oil and
gas software packages are under pressure from their Clients to move their client-server-
based applications to cloud-based modes.
Typical Solutions

Solutions across Infrastructure, GIS, CRM, Fleet Management, Business Intelligence &
Analytics, new Product development, Rig Tracking, Scada, HRM and many more can
be deployed on the cloud and have a lot of potential.

According to IDC, the companies that will survive and prosper are the ones that know how to
leverage enabling technologies like cloud and mobility, to help automate and optimize processes
and apply analytics to improve operations output.
Oil and Gas companies need to align closely with IT SERVICES providers and work
jointly on creating the path ahead that will make the Industry Agile and weather the
unpredictable years ahead.

IT Services Organizations need to DISCOVER and realize this Business NEED, DESIGN
effective Business Solutions and DELIVER them with a focus on Quick Replications
across Domains and Geographies.

Sunil Rao

suneilrao@gmail.com