How cloud accelerates
business value in theenergy industry
With cloud proving a vital component for staying resilient and prepared for thefuture, this report explains why now is the time to embark on a cloud-native strategy

Inside:Why enterprise content in the cloud matters for the future of energy
How cloud-at-scale can enable Intelligent Operations and an agile workforce
What content solutions are required to prove effective for the energy industry

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Introduction
The global energy industry faces huge challenges
in our changing world. These asset-intensive

Contents

industries have been hugely impacted by arange of external and internal factors – thePage 3
The content challenge

Covid-19 pandemic, oil price fluctuations, recent
technological advancements, remote working andpolitical uncertainty – all of which have forced

Page 5Hyperscaling via content solutionsorganizations to leave their comfort zones andjump into the cloud.
Ultimately, asset-intensive enterprises are no longer

Page 7
Conclusion

positioned to thrive with a “business-as-usual”
mindset. Cloud computing may not be a newtechnology, but as it becomes mainstream, theenergy industry must take a leap of faith into it, if it
is to unravel streams of siloed information. Hidden
within this content is the information companies

Figure 1

require to make vital decisions on cost, opportunity

How important is content to youroperational performance today?

and risk.
In this Oil & Gas IQ ebook, produced incollaboration with OpenText™, we reveal why
energy companies have been adopting aggressive

51%

45%

44%

Business-Important,Non-criticalbut not criticalessential

cloud- and data-ownership strategies, as
they turn away from their reliance on internal
IT ecosystems and toward cloud providersoffering best-in-class services. These services
are provided in a myriad of areas including cyber

SOURCE: Intelligent Operations in Oil and Gas Survey 2020,security, physical security, redundancy, backups

Oil & Gas IQ

and recovery, telecommunications support,
identity management and performance analysis,
offering their value through hyperscaling andcontent solutions.
With cloud as the backbone of the energy
data highway, enterprises have a golden
opportunity to leverage the pace of technology totap bottom-line benefits and shareholder“Informed and connected workers
get information to the rightpeople at the right time, enablingcompanies to make safe andeffective decisions.”

value through digital transformation enabled byMartin Richards

cloud infrastructure.

Senior director and energy industry strategist
at OpenText

2

How cloud accelerates business value in the energy industry

The content challenge
To understand the scale of the content challenge

Martin Richards, senior director and energy

facing enterprises in the energy space, Oil & Gas

industry strategist at OpenText, observes: “Many

IQ ran a survey asking industry insiders whereoperating companies are hampered by internal

their organizations store content. Our Intelligent

silos and a lack of managed integration between

Operations in Oil and Gas survey revealed that 51 perapplications and databases across functional

cent rely on an organization-wide enterprise content

groups. Informed and connected workers get

management (ECM) system which, historically, has

information to the right people at the right time,

been the go-to solution for document storage,

however, which enables companies to make safe

management, organization and distribution.

and effective decisions.”

The issues here, however, lay in multiple storage

With just 20 per cent of survey respondents stating

locations that create confusion and lost content,

that their organizations store critical operational

missing revisions and poor documentation control.

content on Google Cloud, eight per cent lower thanpaper, the oil and gas industry really has a long way
to go to truly adopt cloud solutions. Wisely, 45 percent of respondents stated that they store content
on Microsoft SharePoint, but still, in this multiplechoice question, the majority of respondents said
their content sits with internal platforms.
As major companies push cloud agendas,
OpenText’s Richards says: “Cloud computing inFigure 2

Where does your organization currently store its critical operational content?
Respondents could select multiple answers

51%

Organization-wide ECM
Microsoft SharePoint

45%

File share44%

Laptop

29%

Paper

28%
20%

Google Cloud0%
SOURCE: Intelligent Operations in Oil and Gas Survey 2020, Oil & Gas IQ

3How cloud accelerates business value in the energy industry

Respondents (%)

55%

energy has been available for many years andenter the market providing cloud versions of criticalthose that hesitated to move are already behind.”business systems, market and business pressures
are creating both an opportunity and a dilemma:“Cloud platforms for a wide range of solutions acrossthe opportunity to deliver considerable value tothe energy sector have become mainstream,”

the business comes with the dilemma of choosing

he adds. “While many data-driven solutions that

where to deploy the cloud.

incorporate advanced technologies such as data
science, machine learning and AI hold promise, there

Cloud in a dynamic ecosystemremains a critical element of available and accuratecontent such as drawings and operating proceduresOver the last five years, the energy market hasthat form the backbone of an operating company.”experienced significant change through technology
and business process redesign. As an industry,

In a recent presentation, IDC found that thehowever, technological change – especially within

Covid-19 pandemic had exposed significant

oil and gas – has been slow.

vulnerabilities in business operations and supply
chains, with three-quarters of US companies

This trend is being driven by innovation from

reporting supply chain disruption during thea wide range of providers in the provision ofCovid-19 crisis. As only 35 per cent of businesseshardware, software and advisory services.

had completed their digital transformation prior to

The sense of business ownership for content

the pandemic, many organizations quickly realized(structured and unstructured), including its

they had much catching up to do on their digital

governance and availability across an operatingtransformation journeys.

enterprise, is foundational to a knowledge-based,
learning organization and a prerequisite for

Most businesses engage expert partners to help

Intelligent Operations.

create a business case and blueprint for successful
digital transformation projects that emphasize
optimized end-to-end business processes andworkflows, improved visibility into operations andcustomer behavior, and complete alignment with thebusiness strategy. These outcomes are essential tobuilding a resilient and adaptable future enterprise.

“Cloud computing in energy has
been available for many years
and those that hesitated to moveare already behind.”Martin Richards

Among the known benefits of cloud are improved

Senior director and energy industry strategist at

IT security and business agility, as well as its ability

OpenText

to drive innovation and reduce the total size ofIT budgets. By utilizing the cloud, companies’ IT

Owner-operators of asset-intensive industries

departments can best serve changing businessacross the energy ecosystem are facing calls torequirements through reduced costs and improved

finally act and reimagine their business models

application service levels.

to scale via cloud. By opening up operational
improvements across a range of areas including

The reality is that most legacy applications cannot

operations, maintenance, engineering, reliability,

be changed quickly or inexpensively, resulting in

HSE and supply chain, cloud helps businesses

solution providers adjusting their focus to deliver

manage valuable content to drive safe, reliable andnew options for their customers. As new vendors

compliant operations.

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How cloud accelerates business value in the energy industry

Hyperscaling via content solutions
The energy industry has been notoriously slow torisks through improved business insights andadopt cloud solutions due to a mixture of factors,

process speed.

ranging from fears about security and control, toits perceived importance below financial concerns.

Embracing the cloud provides a digital foundation

Encouraged by the Covid-19 pandemic, however,for all employees to have secure access to essential

many firms working in the energy space havebusiness information and processes, collaborate

realized that they now have to act and embraceeffectively with dispersed stakeholders andcloud solutions if they are to keep up with thesynthesize data into timely insights.

competition and scale at pace.
Solutions such as Content Cloud for Energy from
Among the comments made in the Intelligent

OpenText™ combine content capture, storage,

Operations in Oil and Gas Survey 2020, conductedorganization and archiving, making content

by Oil & Gas IQ in late-2020, one respondent said

available to all stakeholders across variousthat the pandemic had led their organization

departments, internally and externally. An IM system

to “have no choice other than to intensively use

in the cloud can store petabytes of content frommobile network in most aspects of its jobs”, whileasset intensive operations making it easy to harvest

another said they had to “focus on more robust

embedded data elements to support digitallyand real-time video and sensor monitoring via

focused operation. Cloud-enabled content can be

SCADA systems”. Both respondents now rely heavily

opened up to a global ecosystem of partners whoon access to the cloud in order for them and theircan work together to deliver value applications

colleagues to perform their duties.

across the energy value chain by enabling Intelligent
Operations that transform the way people work.

As many individuals working in the sector alreadyhave access to cloud on their phone, it is surprising

What the ecosystem entails

that their companies have not been providing thesame access to their employees for many years.

Whether private, hybrid or public, cloud computing

Without access to the cloud, it becomes difficult

has many guises, with all offering owner-operatorsfor firms to find the space and opportunity tosafe and reliable infrastructure-as-a-service

embrace Intelligent Operations. Also, a one-size-options. In a world where Amazon, Google andfits-all approach becomes all the more possible

Microsoft seemingly rule the roost, the ecosystem

via the cloud, making the release of content

actually offers expansive and tailored solutions toshared across an enterprise easier in contrast

the energy industry, including Enterprise Resource

to the difficulties faced when doing so acrossPlanning (ERP) and Enterprise Asset Management

disconnected systems.

(EAM) from providers such as SAP and OpenText.
Adopting a cloud-based strategy helps toIntegrated cloud solution for energy
suppliers

decrease cost and complexity, and enhances

Information management (IM) solutions enable

Many of the barriers that held oil and gas

businesses to grow faster, lower operational costs

companies back from adopting cloud computing

and reduce information governance and security

are falling. Oil and gas companies traditionally5capabilities such as AI, ML and DS.

How cloud accelerates business value in the energy industry

viewed their data as proprietary and competitive,

Cloud-based IM systems are driving to fill whiteleading to a tendency to keep that data

space and bring the much-promised value ofin a company-owned data centers. Opendata science, machine learning and AI to the fore.

data or curated data companies, however,

Digital strategies that embed enterprise content

demonstrate faster growth than those who

management are forming the backbone ofhold their data proprietary. Also, enormousoperations, enabling engineers to perform critical

data volumes in oil and gas can be stored andtasks in asset-intensive operating environments ascomputed via the cloud, meaning fewer potential

their businesses scale.

asset management and maintenance issues.
In our Intelligent Operations in Oil and Gas Survey

Changing applications and hyperscale
operations

2020, Oil & Gas IQ found organizations that provide
their operational staff with mobile access to criticaloperating data were more forward-looking in theirIntelligent Operations is playing a vital role incontent strategies, incorporating data elements

providing integrated and intelligent solutions tothat support the creation of a digital thread acrossoperational environments across the global energy

robust work processes. With a sturdy digital thread

sector as it shifts to mobile and remote working.

in place, organizations can begin to think big, as
they automate at scale and gain a competitive
advantage over their rivals.

Figure 3

Which of the following business processes has your organization automated?
Respondents could select multiple answers

46%

Logistics and supply chain
Training and development

44%

Asset performance management

44%
38%

Engineering content change management
Inspections

32%

PSM (process safety management)

32%
25%

CAPA (corrective and preventative action)

21%

FMEA (failure mode and effects analysis)

13%

PSSR (pre-startup safety review)

11%

Other
0%
SOURCE: Intelligent Operations in Oil and Gas Survey 2020, Oil & Gas IQ

6How cloud accelerates business value in the energy industry

Respondents (%)

50%

In conclusion
As attitudes in the energy industry continue toOpenText’s Richards notes: “If an organization

change toward the value of their stored data anddoesn’t have a solid foundation in place for digital

understanding of opportunities available by diving

insights, then the harsh reality is that it doesn’t

into the cloud, those that fail to adopt a cloud-first

matter what you digitize.”strategy will likely be the companies that fall behind.
Cloud infrastructure can act as the backbone of
An inability to scale operations will be intrinsicallythe energy data highway by providing enterprises

linked to a failure to adopt the cloud as the placewith the opportunity to keep pace with technology

to store, compute and access the huge swaths

and by adding value through digital transformation.

of data generated by companies working at theforefront of energy.

Finding the perfect cloud partner may be the nextstep, but it is part of a journey that that can only be

As stated in Oil & Gas IQ’s The State ofembarked upon if an organization has the ambition

Intelligent Operations in Oil and Gas report,and foresight to take the leap of faith into the cloud.

Manage digital transformation in the energy industry withAsset Information Management for Energy
Securely manage content to improve efficiency across your organization. Content Cloud for Energy fromOpenText delivers visibility, insight and control over engineering projects and operational content to reducerisk and cost. Managing engineering and operational content in the cloud improves ROI while creating afoundation for digital transformation in the energy industry.

OpenText partnerships
OpenText is committed to delivering our information management applications with OpenText Cloud
Managed Services, the energy industry’s choice of cloud platform

OpenText™ on Amazon Web

OpenText™ on Google Cloud

OpenText™ on Microsoft Azure

Services (AWS) delivers

offers applications for thecombines the application

OpenText applications as

Energy industry as managed

expertise of OpenText with themanaged services on Amazon’sservices on Google’s enterprise-

scalability, security and global

secure, scalable public cloud.

class cloud platform.

reach of Microsoft’s cloud services.

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How cloud accelerates business value in the energy industry