You may have oil and gas production sites scattered from the mountains to the prairies, to the oceans and offshore in the beautiful, but super remote seas around the globe. Collecting and consolidating that remotely located data is one thing—pushing it back out to your varied end-users in an actionable and analyzed format may be a whole, more complicated other story.

Imagine you were a spy... Not the creepy kind of spy, but you know the James Bond type of spy; the super-slick, ultra-cool, well-spoken, always well-dressed and never gets caught kind of spy. I can imagine if offshore oil and gas production had a spy it would look and act like Emerson's DeltaV™ SaaS SCADA. Minus of course all the fast cars, fancy dates and danger. But we can get you all the detailed information of what exactly is happening far away - without disrupting what's actually going on; so it's spy-like, without all the showbiz-glitz, creepiness, or glam price-tags.

Maybe your company is still hesitating on adding automation for remote monitoring and diagnostics for your onshore or offshore oil and gas production. 

I get it, change can be a giant challenge and going from paper reports and driving to wellsite locations may seem like lightyears from how you do things today. But making simple, step by step tech changes can quickly pay off in multiples. In truth, the more assets you have, and the more distant they are, the faster a cloud-native SCADA system will pay off and create wild returns.

You and your amazing employees have worked hard to build your OEM business, and it shows in your long-term success and happy end customers. Now that you have created processes that are tried and true to your business model and fully support your company sustainability, you may be thinking it's a good time to think about how you can take it all to the next level through building out stronger efficiencies and better work-flows that will simplify day-to-day operations and also present your people with the right data they need to make better, faster decisions while being much more focused on what really matters (your end customers).

You and your dedicated staff have all worked very hard to get your production levels to exactly where you want them to be and that's not an easy task, and certainly not an easy one to keep rolling without loads of serious challenges. Sure, every company has obstacles and set-backs here and there; but when it comes to production; one tiny hiccup can result in several factors of safety, profitability and even your organizations long-standing sustainability.

It's no secret that production downtime can be significant and negatively impact your operations very quickly.

These challenges happen with the blink of an eye - and cause long-standing downtime, lost profits and serious safety impacts. Here are five keys to prevent production downtime to help you remain up and running while keeping your people safer, profit margins up and maintaining your operations for a life-time of strong returns for generations.

We've all been there - called a support number for a product or service and got to the point where you know for a fact your blood pressure is at a boiling point because not only did the person not answer your question with anything but what was on their 'script' in front of them, but made YOU jump through all their hoops before giving you that scripted, and completely useless response. To say this is 'infuriating' is a giant understatement, and makes you lose faith in all humanity because it seems no one can think for themselves or get the slightest bit creative on what might help you in your time of need.

Thankfully, some people, and companies actually get what the word 'support' means and take the right steps to enable their people to understand what their products can 'do'. Those same, very carefully chosen people that are placed in support roles hold a strong desire to help their customers and are willing to be relentless in how they discover ways to help solve problems. Those rare people are the ones that aren't afraid to put ideas into action and are even exceptionally polite about it through the process. Imagine that - Faith in humanity saved in a single, easy, helpful, dare I even say enjoyable phone call.

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.

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.