It's time to archive your Oil & Gas data
Given the jittery climate in the Middle East and North Africa, the oil price has jumped to over USD100 per barrel. The oil fields are in danger of being engulfed by the political instability in the region. If I was an oil baron, what would I do?
Fear not, because it is time to archive the data. Data is most valuable asset in Oil & Gas and the best way to ensure its long term value is to archive it. The data cannot be kept forever online, in the production storage because the company has to continue to purchase new storage. But no Oil & Gas company has bottomless pockets and therefore, data that has aged beyond its present value should be archived onto a cheaper form of media.
The objective of archiving Oil & Gas data is not so much about saving costs of IT and storage, but more of the value of the data that has been created. The value is immense.
The Oil & Gas team consists of mostly geo-technical engineers and geoscientists and their relation with IT has always been challenging. These G&G people might be the IT itself and in bigger companies, the IT function is separate.
IT-centric views of the Oil & Gas data is basically ... IT. The data is either files or a group of storage blocks. When it is time for backup or archive, IT just chucks the files or storage blocks into secondary medium such as cheap SATA disks or tapes. When the G&G team wants to re-examine and possibly restore the data, IT just reverse the process and dumps the "pile" of data back to the G&G team. It is exactly like the funnies below.
There's an easier way and something that is less IT-centric and more Oil & Gas project-friendly. Enigma Data Solutions provides sophisticated information management software and consultancy services that address today’s Oil & Gas information management and storage demands. Enigma's solutions PARS (Project Archiving and Retrieval System), IDS (Intelligent Data Store) and SmartMove enable the project-aware archiving of G&G projects. More importantly, the restoration of Oil & Gas data back to the G&G environment is fast and less painful because the requirement to rebuild the project environment is lessened tremendously.
Enigma's independent solutions enable businesses facing intensive data storage challenges to operate more effectively by preserving strategic data and reducing Total Cost of Ownership. For over 20 years, Enigma software and consultancy services have delivered cost effective solutions for blue chip customers across data-intensive industries.
As the political turmoil (or the environmental disaster of BP a couple of years back) spills over, the need to protect the most valuable asset (the DATA) has never been stronger. Archiving and move the data away from these dangerous liaisons is the best way to ensure the longevity of the Oil & Gas industry. After all, oil is Black Gold and the data is the key to the Black Gold.
