Momentum is Building

In the last few weeks and months on this blog, we’ve discussed some events, trends, and technology that we think signal a real momentum in the market to move the industry closer to realizing the full value potential of technology initiatives, such as the digital oil field (DOF), along the entire oil and gas value chain.

As we begin the second decade of this millennium, the technology has evolved to meet the daunting challenges of oil and gas business and operations. Today, it is commonplace to use technology that as little as 15 years ago was considered by many to be science fiction. As an industry, we’ve made great strides in using the technology to develop solutions, and our collective knowledge about how to transform the industry to meet the twenty-first century global energy demand continues to grow.

Some of the key technological advances include:

· Robust, reliable communication and collaboration technology embedded right into technical apps and enabling secure information flow across all boundaries—silos within an enterprise and partners outside the enterprise.

· Fast, reliable and secure access to structured and unstructured information across an enterprise and externally with partners with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007.

· Continually evolving operating systems that maximize hardware capabilities, increase security, and improve performance and productivity—Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. The oil and gas industry is quickly realizing their benefits.

· Innovative application of new technology, such as Landmark’s use of state-of-the-art interactive visualization tools from Microsoft’s Xbox® gaming console in its new GeoGraphix Discovery 3D geographic modeling application.

· Affordable and accessible high-performance computing that can be easily integrated with standard oil and gas workflows.

· The emergence of cloud computing—remote centers for storing and accessing data and applications using the Internet—which Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer discussed in his address at our Global Energy Forum in Houston. See previous post

At Microsoft, our oil and gas team continues to develop our expertise by engaging with our partners and industry organizations to help solve industry-wide challenges—for example, by using our technology and expertise to help with the development and adoption of upstream data exchange standards, which are crucial for seamless information flow that will improve operational efficiency. See previous post

What do you see happening next? Are we on the right track? We want to hear from you. Post a quick comment now.