The cloud imperative for the energy industry
October 9, 2020
October 9, 2020
With the energy industry priorities shifting and the volume of data steadily rising, the need for cloud has never been greater. At the same time, the cloud value proposition for energy companies has never been stronger, therefore truly embracing the potential now has become a business imperative.
The energy industry has never been more ready to embrace the cloud potential. The energy cloud market is growing significantly each year, and many operators have started experimenting with cloud technologies. Oilfield services companies are leading the charge, with many planning to completely retire their on-premise IT in the next five years. But even the supermajors are embarking on their journeys to cloud.
The energy industry needs to pursue three reinvention imperatives:
Energy companies’ structural and technological limitations have created barriers to connectivity, scalability and effective data management—three things that are essential to achieving the industry’s imperatives and its reinvention. Cloud helps to dismantle these barriers by providing seamless and instant connectivity and computing power that is scalable and comes at a lower cost. It also transforms an organization’s ability to use data in fundamentally new ways.
Data in the energy industry is typically housed in many disconnected on-premise systems and databases. Reinvention calls for bringing all that data together to enable an enterprise-wide view, generate insights through the application of analytics and applied intelligence tools such as machine learning, and facilitate better and faster decision-making. Current IT environments are simply not up to the task. The issue will become even more daunting as the amount of data at energy companies’ disposal continues to proliferate.
Cloud is a powerful foundation on which to build the data capabilities that are needed now. Companies that employ cloud (and cloud-only analytics tools with computing requirements that can only be addressed with cloud) to harness the power of data will enjoy a clear competitive advantage.
Cloud platforms enable near real-time connectivity between what have traditionally been siloed functional areas. This connectivity makes it possible for companies to build and leverage advanced analytics to analyze, explore and establish causal relationships between various functions. An understanding of these functional relationships, in turn, enables companies to take an integrated business view to decision-making.
In an industry that is inherently volatile and cyclical, this integrated view is critical for developing resilience, as well as the flexibility that is needed to scale up or down with fluctuating cycles. Energy companies that fail to take advantage of cloud’s connectivity, flexibility and security will find it exceedingly difficult to achieve the business resilience, variable cost models and value-optimization capabilities that enable competitiveness. Ultimately, it is a collaborative environment that enables the energy to become sustainable.
Cloud can transform every element of the energy value chain. Connectivity, scalability, analytics and automation can drive cost savings and profitability in virtually countless ways.
Connect financial and operational data with real-time sensing technology to optimize decision-making on spending, well productivity and cycle time.
Deliver impact in two key areas: pipeline network management and commercial optimization while enabling more effective predictive operations.
Expand visibility and integration, thereby enabling self-optimizing planning, predictive operations, risk calibration and better cost management.
Enable the integration of point of sales and external data to allow advanced scenario modeling.
Integrate project, cost and time data into complex 5D models for real-time visibility, design standardization or optimizations, and collaboration.
Not all cloud solutions are created equal. The farther companies advance on their cloud journeys, the greater the benefits.
At its most basic level, cloud is used to optimize technology. Accenture’s analyses indicate this use of cloud typically reduces total IT spend by 25%-30%, which translates to ~0.5 percentage point (pp) increase in ROCE.
In the next level of maturity, cloud can be used to accelerate a company’s digital journey through the adoption of cloud-first automated processes. Accenture estimates the benefits at this stage to be in the order of 4 to 6 pp of ROCE.
There are four ways companies can move to the cloud. Each option—or cloud state—addresses specific needs and migrates different aspects of on-premise IT architecture to the cloud over different timeframes.
Move current workloads from data center to a cloud infrastructure hosted by a third-party provider.
Move enterprise business process applications such as ERP or CRM to versions that are offered natively on the cloud platform.
Shift core business processes and systems such as asset performance management to applications and platforms offered natively on the cloud.
Create new business solutions from scratch—such as an application that measures decision impacts across the end-to-end organization.
Amid the industry’s current state of disruption and the critical energy transition looming ahead, energy companies need to redefine resilience, boost competitiveness and prepare for the sustainable energy future. Cloud is a critical enabler of each of these imperatives—and, by extension, the industry’s reinvention.
What steps can energy companies start taking today to launch cloud-enabled transformation?