Why Hybrid Cloud Fit Upstream Oil & Gas Better Than “Cloud Only”
In upstream oil & gas, downtime isn’t an inconvenience — it’s millions lost. Your wells don’t stop producing just because connectivity drops. As leaders in IT and Operations, you feel the pressure to innovate while keeping everything running smoothly and safely.
The promise of public clouds is attractive. But for you, sending everything to a distant data center often means trading one set of problems for another like gaining flexibility but losing control. What if you didn’t have to choose? What if you could have both?
Why “Cloud-Only” Hits a Dead End in the Field.
The “cloud-only” model reaches a dead end in the field due to a fundamental mismatch with your operational reality. It fails to address three critical challenges that render a purely cloud-based solution both impractical and risky for field operations.
Remote Fields, Limited Connectivity:
Your most valuable data is born in the most isolated places. A seismic survey vessel in the middle of an ocean can’t wait for a satellite link to process terabytes of data. By the time the insights come back from the cloud, the opportunity to adjust the survey in real-time is gone. The delay costs you time, money, and competitive advantage.
Data Overload:
You are drowning in data. From every sensor on a drill string to every valve on a production platform, the volume is staggering. Continuously pumping this river of data into the cloud is technically impractical and financially unsustainable.
The Control Problem:
This is the most critical one. Your drilling and production systems require instant, local processing. Safety and operational integrity cannot depend on an internet connection. A “cloud-only” model introduces an unacceptable risk of latency and disruption.
How to Bring the Hybrid Cloud to Your World
The solution lies in redefining the cloud, not abandoning it. Instead of relocating your extensive and time-critical workloads to the cloud, you can bring the cloud’s agility and capabilities to them. This is the essence of a Hybrid Cloud approach powered by HPE GreenLake and HPE Alletra.
With Hybrid Cloud, you get a seamless cloud experience that spans from your central data center to your most distant rig, a setup where you pay only for what you use yet enjoy the performance and control of having infrastructure right where it’s needed.
By addressing these everyday challenges:
- Faster Seismic Insights, right on the offshore platform:
Instead of waiting to transfer data to shore, a compact HPE Alletra system installed directly on the offshore platform, managed by HPE GreenLake, acts as a powerful local data center. Your geophysicists and engineers can process and interpret seismic and operational data where it is generated. This enables real-time decisions for management and drilling optimization, cutting project timelines from weeks to days.
- Unbreakable Operations on Your Production Platform:
An HPE GreenLake edge platform runs your historian and control systems with unwavering reliability. It ensures zero-latency for critical operations, completely independent of connectivity. Meanwhile, it intelligently streams only the vital, summarized health and production data to your corporate cloud, giving leadership a real-time view without risking operational safety.
- A Modern Data Center That Works Like a Cloud:
Transform your data center with HPE Alletra and HPE GreenLake. You keep your applications on-premises for top performance and security, but you manage it all with cloud-like simplicity and pay only for what you use.
The New Reality: Agility Meets Execution, Everywhere
This isn’t just a technical shift; it’s a business transformation. By adopting this hybrid model, you stop making compromises and start gaining advantages.
The impact is clear:
- Speed to Insight: Make critical decisions in hours, not weeks. Accelerate exploration and production cycles.
- Enhanced Operational Safety & Uptime: Ensure unwavering reliability for critical field operations, mitigating risks associated with connectivity.
- Optimized Financial Performance: Shift from high capital expenditure to predictable operational expense, aligning IT costs directly with business use.
- Unified Management:
Gain a single pane of glass to manage your entire IT estate, from the data center to the most remote field location.
Ready to explore Hybrid Cloud for your rigs or platforms?
Our team at Alwadi can assess your current environment and design a tailored hybrid cloud strategy using HPE GreenLake and Alletra.
