Social distancing has become a regular practice now and a part of our current vernacular. As families continue adjusting to work-from-home parents and distance-learning kids, family distancing is becoming a practice as well. Staying productive – especially in close quarters – is a challenge for most. Businesses are going through similar adjustments as many have not previously embraced a mobile workforce or a virtual office. Those that have done so have largely embraced cloud computing as an enabling technology.
The oil and gas industry has made strides towards cloud computing, but primarily in back-office or corporate-based systems. In industrial automation contexts, cloud computing adoption has progressed more slowly. The slow progress arises from concerns over cybersecurity, replacement costs, data ownership, and loss of control. The capabilities and value of cloud computing today though have diminished these as ongoing concerns.
So what explains the continued prevalence of strictly on-premise solutions? One answer is that it takes time for technology buyers to become comfortable with recommending, buying, implementing, and supporting technological change. Another is that change at scale typically happens in the latter phases of a legacy technology lifecycle timeline, which in an industrial setting can take decades.
With COVID-19 and entire workforces now sheltered in place, employees are finding the transition to a home office impeded by on-premise technology. These solutions require on-premise maintenance and are sometimes difficult to access remotely. Cloud-based solutions are built from the ground up for remote access, administration, maintenance, and scale. Companies that have embraced the cloud are finding the transition – even if temporary – to a virtual office more seamless. With business owners and executives focused on business continuity, these are important value propositions for companies.
Ambyint recently had a customer tell us that we are the only operational technology (OT) and optimization application that has seamlessly and smoothly supported their work-from-home transition. Power of the cloud! Are you leveraging cloud-based technology to optimize your workforce or oil and gas production operations? Let us know how it’s going and how we can help.