In the Eagle Ford plays of deep south Texas, we have plenty to worry about: heat, dust, the occasional rattlesnake, and H2S for starters. Life certainly keeps us on our toes!

What our customers like about having their remote monitoring data readily available through Zedi Access™ is that it shortens their list of things to worry about. Considerably.

What if your pipelines or wells could call you up and tell you they were sick before they went down?

If you’ve ever gone to the doctor to get some medicine at the first sign of a fever—to try to shorten the illness—you understand what I mean.

What kind of risk taker were you as a kid? Were you the one who built a rickety ramp out of plywood, braced it up with some loose bricks you found in the yard and wheeled your bike bravely up to the top?

“Dear Producer,” the email should read. “I want to tell you about a problem I have on well number 10. It’s—well, it’s just not producing like it should. I think there may be a liquid loading problem. In truth, this has been building up for a while, and I was afraid something like this would happen. What should we do?”

I don’t know if you ever read advice columns, where people write in and ask for help with relationship issues. Sometimes it’s interesting to see what the columnist has to offer as a solution.

I love a good conference; one where the speakers not only have good information, but where they also dream a little bit about how the new information will improve the future. It always energizes my imagination about how we can better use technology to partner with our customers and help them achieve their goals.

I had an interesting conversation with my friend's young son the other day—about how phones used to be. Remember? Wired to the wall. We were all trapped by that wire; the phones and anyone using them. The huge advance with the invention of the cordless phone that would let you roam all the way to the perimeter of your home or office, and sometimes lose the handset under a couch cushion!

My friend's son was wide-eyed. He’s never known that limitation. “How did you listen to music or watch videos?” he asked. I smiled, because tech has certainly come a long way, and helps us in so many ways we don't even think about.

How does that relate to DeltaV SaaS SCADA Mobile? To heck with geographical limitations for data and remote operations control! The perimeters of the earth are the only limitations!

Albert Einstein, as you may recall, was pretty good at understanding complex stuff like, say, the makeup of the universe, quantum physics and the like. It’s interesting that he’s the one who said that if you didn’t understand something well enough to explain it to your grandmother, you didn’t really understand it.

Well, I like to think of myself as knowing a thing or two about tech like IIoT (Industrial Internet of Things), SaaS (Software as a Service), and even SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) and I‘m even able to successfully explain it all to a Grandma without issue. So, if you're interested in learning three easy steps to help your operations digitally step up to the plate read on...

In the area of oilfield data, we know we’ve been sitting on a gold mine.

Well, sitting is not the right word, because we have been working on how to process all that information.

Have you seen the dashboards on today’s cars? The information they give you is amazing—you can almost get where you’re going by watching the dashboard alone. The idea, of course, is to consolidate information you need in order to stay safe; what’s behind you, beside you and in front of you and when they get too close.

DeltaV SaaS SCADA with Asset Protect software is a lot like that. It tells you the location of equipment like compressors, pumpjacks and other onsite equipment, along with pipeline inventory, preventative maintenance programs and more, so that’s what’s around you. It also lets you track moves of that equipment, so your information stays current and available to your people when they need it.

If automation for you conjures up images of complexity along the lines of The Matrix or other elaborate theory, I have some good news. It doesn’t have to be that complicated.

As an example, I love looking at all the ways the actual data from creating automation can improve the bottom line and generally make life simpler. Or the way something simple like automating tank levels with alarms can actually save lives - the possibilities are endlessly beneficial, but not nearly as complex as you may think (or have to worry about anyway).