Future platform in E&P
Ed Evans FBCS
Data Consultant @ Open Data Institute | Data and business, Data Strategy
The Future Platform – how close are you?
Most Digital Transformation programmes fail to deliver the envisaged benefits. Most focus more on the technology and less on the essential business changes that deliver value. An approach using a defined Future Platform, as described here, breaks barriers between business and IT and provides a channel for all that fizzing innovation.
In the video clip @Jonathan Jenkins and I (@Ed Evans) discuss the Future Platform. This note provides a little more context and some more ideas about the balance of value.
The Future Platform is a concept. An idealised view of converging technologies in the digital world that supports, controls and enables business and technical workflows.
This ideal Future Platform provides access to the best available software (AI and ML tools). It provides high quality data, delivers securely to the end user or team irrespective of location. There is effectively unlimited processing power and elastic storage. You don’t need to worry about media or the format of the data all of your data is available and is ‘legacy free’. The system response time and data access times are as if processing and data are stored locally. Do you see why it is a concept?
Future platform general architecture.
Why bother? It is essential to define the Future Platform in terms of impact on the business. However, the easier, and perhaps, lazier way is to define the Future Platform by focusing on the maturity or utility of the technology. The latter is the typical approach. In this way IT and the business can avoid talking to each other and can carry on being busy.
So, a better way is to rip-up your existing cloud strategy. Replace it with a business data strategy where cloud technology is in context. You will increase the chances of better outcomes from a clear understanding of technology in context of the Future Platform, for example:
Business priorities – Access to a wider range of data or AI embedded in technical apps? Do you have to choose? Plans may include new office locations, acquisitions /divestments or a virtual implementation or a huge new seismic survey.
Roadmap – The urgency to address the current digital environment may depend on business priorities, as above. It may depend on the maturity of available technology or perhaps the age and performance of the existing systems and data environment. An effect of the industry downturn is that many organisations have not upgraded technical systems during the last 4 years.
Game Changers – Every hackathon, jam or developer team is working on the next killer app. How easy is it to access the latest tool? How do we get the data into the right shape? How do we manage the costs of use?
Big vendors (and risks) – The leading vendors are offering tools within a platform. How open is the platform? How soon will the promised technology be delivered. How will access be licensed?
Pace of change – There is a choice. What is the company’s attitude to implementing technology? Does the company have the environment to try and test innovative technology?
Disruption – Imagine an oil company large or small that is able to access the latest applications and all their available data in the cloud. Able to tap into industry expertise in any part of the world in a coordinated collaboration. Unless your IT team and the business are working closely together that company will be someone else.