Oil and gas industry as an example for peripheral cloud systems

Last week, my team held an exciting event at the Four Seasons Hotel in Houston, Texas. It was devoted to the continuation of the tendency of development of closer relations between the participants. It was an event that brought together users, partners and customers. . In addition, many Hitachi representatives attended the event. When organizing this enterprise, we set ourselves two goals:

1. Reinvue interest in ongoing research on new industry issues;
2. Check the areas in which we are already working and developing, as well as their adjustment based on user feedback.

Doug Gibson and Matt Hall ( Agile Geoscience ) began by discussing the state of the industry and the various problems associated with managing and processing seismic data. It was quite inspiring and, of course, revealing to hear how the volume of investment is distributed between production, transportation and processing. Most recently, the lion's share of investment was in mining, which was once the king of the volume of funds consumed, but gradually investments are being transferred into processing and transportation. Matt spoke about his fascination with literal observation of the geological development of the Earth using seismic data.

In general, I believe that our event can be considered as the “first appearance” for works that we started several years ago. We will continue to inform you about the various achievements and successes in our work, which is being pursued in this direction. Further, inspired by Matt Hall’s performance, we conducted a series of sessions, which resulted in a very valuable exchange of experiences.

Peripheral (boundary) or cloud computing?

At one of the sessions, Doug and Ravi (Hitachi Research in Santa Clara) held a discussion on how to transfer some of the analytics to peripheral computing for faster and more accurate decision making. There are many reasons for this, and I think that the three most significant of them are narrow data transmission channels, large amounts of data (both in terms of arrival rate, volume and diversity), and tight decision-making schedules. Despite the fact that some processes (especially geological) may take weeks, months or years to complete, there are quite a few cases in this industry where urgency is of particular importance. In this case, the inability to access the centralized cloud can be disastrous! In particular, issues related to HSE (health, safety and the environment), as well as issues related to oil and gas production, require rapid analysis and decision-making. Perhaps the best way is to show this with different numbers as an example - let the specific details remain anonymous to “protect the innocent”.

• The last mile wireless networks are being upgraded in places such as the Perm Basin, with the transition of channels from the satellite (where speed was measured in kbps) to 10 Mbit / s channel using 4G / LTE or unlicensed frequency band. Even these upgraded networks can not cope when faced with terabytes and petabytes of data at the border.
• Sensory systems from companies such as FOTECH, which are combined with many other new and new sensory platforms, can produce several terabytes per day. Additional digital cameras that are installed to monitor security and protect against theft also generate a large amount of data, which means that a full set of big data categories (volume, arrival rate and diversity) are formed at the border.
• In the case of seismic systems used for data collection, projects include “converged” systems placed in ISO containers for collecting and reformatting seismic data potentially up to a scale of 10 petabytes of data. Due to the remote locations in which these intelligence systems operate, there is a serious lack of bandwidth to move data from the last mile border to the data center over the networks. Therefore, service companies literally send data from the border to the data center on tape, optical or durable magnetic storage devices.
• The brownfield operators of the factories, where thousands of events happen every day and dozens of “red alarms”, want to work more optimally and stably. However, networks with low data rates and the almost complete lack of storage for data collection for analysis at factories suggest that something more fundamental is needed before starting the basic analysis of current operations.

It certainly makes me think that while the providers of public cloud systems are trying to transfer all this data to their platforms, there is a harsh reality that you need to try to cope with. Perhaps the best way to classify this problem is to try to shove an elephant through a straw! However, many of the virtues of the cloud are simply necessary. So what can we do?

Transition to Peripheral Cloud Systems

Of course, Hitachi already has (industry) optimized solutions on the market that enrich data at the border, analyze it and compress it to the minimum useful amount of data, and also provide business advisory systems that can improve peripheral computing processes. However, my conclusion from last week is that the solutions to these complex problems are related not so much to the widget that you bring to the table, as to the approach to solving the problem. This is really the spirit of the Lumada platform from the Hitachi Insight Group, as it includes methods for attracting users, ecosystems and, if necessary, provides tools for discussion. I was very happy to return to solving problems (and not selling products), because Matt Hall said: “I was glad to see that Hitachi employees started to understand the extent of the problem” when we closed our summit.

So can the O & G (oil and gas industry) make a living example of the need to implement peripheral computing? It seems that, given the problems found during our summit, as well as other industry interactions, the likely answer is yes. Perhaps the reason for this is so clear, because peripheral computing, industry targeting, and blending of cloud design patterns are evident as the stacks upgrade. I think that in this case the question “how” deserves attention.

Using Matt's quote from the last paragraph, we understand how to push the principle of cloud computing to peripheral computing. In fact, for this industry, we have to carry out “old-fashioned” and sometimes personal contacts with people who participate in different parts of the ecosystem of the oil and gas industry, such as geologists, drilling engineers, geophysicists, and so on. Given these interactions that need to be addressed, their scope and depth become more obvious and even convincing. Then, when we draw up implementation plans and bring them to life, we will decide to build peripheral cloud systems.
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However, if we are sitting in the center, just reading and presenting these problems, we will not have enough understanding and sympathy to really do our best. So again, yes, oil and gas will create peripheral cloud systems, but it is an understanding of the real needs of local users that will help us determine which problems are of primary importance.