Many people enjoy knowing every little detail about something, even if it doesn't really correlate directly to them. All the power to them! Personally, I like people to get right to the point; tell me what I need to know - Don't dance around what you're trying to say, or give me so much info it makes my head spin.

Please, please, please just be clear and concise.

I'm pretty sure companies and their staff also want their data straightforward and easy to understand. Not such a large amount of data that drowns them with every tiny detail that isn't relevant, or actionable. Sometimes too much data can become pretty much useless because it would take you hours to filter through it all to find the data you actually do need.

When someone mentions something like 'cloud-native IIoT' do your teeth start to clench in stress and you immediately begin to search for your antacids to ward off the quickly approaching heartburn that comes with the topic? I hear you, understand your anxiety and totally feel your pain because I've been there many times before.

That's until I started thinking of IIoT (Industrial Internet of Things) differently; what it really 'means' to us, the humans of the world. How it can actually help makes our lives better in several ways; like increasing the safety of many very dangerous situations, how it can even prevent terrible problems before they even happen and how it can make companies be more profitable so more people keep their jobs and prices don't over-inflate for the end buyers.

I think it's safe to safe that many of us have experienced different times in our lives that we knew we didn't have all the information; times when we simply knew there was more to the story, or something missing that we should know in order to make an informed decision. Some people call it intuition, others say it's a 'hunch' - call it whatever you like, but either way having that feeling is certainly frustrating at best; potentially even life-threatening at worst.

When it comes to your operations, I hope you don't get that feeling very often - But if you do then we can help.

Municipal gas distribution systems require a delicate balance—keep the natural gas flowing in just the right amounts. If there’s too little, or none, people don’t get something the really need. The heater won’t run, they can't cook, the clothes dryer won't work; you know the consequences.

But too much is also a problem, one which can have massively dangerous consequences—especially if it’s natural gas! But there are thousands of people turning natural gas on and off across, in larger cities, dozens of square miles. Knowing how to manage pressures and flow rates is critical to people. Or when there is an over-pressure situation, being aware of it, and having the ability to quickly detect it and fix it before it gets out of hand can be life-saving.

The stories of budget struggles for municipal water systems seem to grow every week. Overwhelming residential growth on one side, countered by budget-constrained neglect of systems on the other side plague many small to medium sized towns. One way to maximize the budgets these communities do have is through efficient remote monitoring and alarming systems that are IIoT based and cloud-native, but what does that really mean to the operation?

The cost of distractions in life is high. What can often seem like a minor distraction can have a giant impact on life; a distracted drive to work could cause a crash, distracted while reading email could cause you to miss an important request from the boss, or being distracted while spending time with family could result in a loved one that doesn’t feel heard anymore, or think you care.

When it comes to your operations distractions can cause just as much havoc and loss. Distractions cause the risk of safety of people; and the environments around you, and the health of the bottom line. Those distractions could be losing your organization hundreds of thousands of dollars. Without your eye on the prize you could be risking the sustainability of your organization; here today - gone tomorrow happens all too often these days.

While most oil and gas production is somewhat remote from the office, offshore sites are much more distant. Instead of driving a hundred miles or so in a company truck, your management and production staff are helicoptering across gulfs, seas and oceans to stay at least a couple of days before flying back—at great expense, and safety risk.

There are indeed times when that has to happen. But those times can stay few and far between with reliable, fast, cloud-native production data provided by Emerson's DeltaV SaaS SCADA that's complete with a mobile app.

"There is no life without water."  - Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, Nobel Prize-winning biochemist

Municipal water utilities have one of the most important and unappreciated tasks in civilization. They bring water to citizens located far from rivers or streams; located instead in apartment buildings, houses and businesses along city streets and highways.

There is indeed, “no life without water.” But to be useful, that water has to be stored, distributed when needed, and contained. For most organizations today, whether commercial or municipal, there is no industrial life without data. But that data must be available, understandable and actionable. It’s amazing to learn that more than 50% of businesses (and this could include municipalities as well) have more data than they have the data analytics capacity to handle or analyze effectively.

When you’re watching a great movie it absorbs you into the story, the action and the characters. It's probably not a great movie if you find yourself thinking about other things like; “How did they get that camera angle?” Or “These are really strange sound effects" or even worse "Did I put the laundry in the dryer?" 

There’s a strong correlation between the movie production mechanics and your operations. On your computer or smart device, you want just to see the data from local and remote locations—production, measurements, down time, machine health, maintenance schedules, utility costs, alarms, or whatever, as long as it's data you can action upon to help you increase your production, safety, profits or sustainability. You don’t want to fumble around with reporting, why you’re not getting data from the sensors in the compressor, or what happened to last month’s figures. If your current system causes you to do that, you’re ready for a change.

Keeping your operations continuously running smoothly is no small task; but especially if it involves remotely located assets that are hundreds, even thousands of miles from where you work on a daily basis. You don't have the same amount of talented skilled people to be sending them all over the countryside for no good reason anymore. You need to know exactly what's going on, and where before you can even think about scheduling one of your valuable resources to hit the road, jump on a flight or work all that overtime to get to the asset in need.