An estimate of around 2.5 quintillion bytes of datawas produced globally in a day in 2018. With the wider adoption of the internet of things, this has grown at a higher speed ever since. Around 90% of the data we have today was generated in the past 2 years. The Oil & Gas industry is going to be a major generator of field data. As the oil and gas industry is embracing the technological disruptions caused by I4.0, it is expected to facilitate a gigantic build-up of data, especially from the industrial assets like sensors in oil fields and other interconnected devices.

With such a surge in data accumulation, oil and gas industries need to level up their IT resources and have to opt for various cloud services. In this context, data migration services is playing an important role, the topic of this blog.

What is Data Migration?

Data migration is a process of transferring data from one location, format or an application to another. This is usually performed at the enterprise level for moving the data to the cloud. It is an imperative and quite hectic process usually handled by the data management service providers.

Business Benefits of Data Migration

Data is one of the stepping stones that drives the success of any business, irrespective of the industry they belong to. For the oil and gas industry, in particular, the real-time, accurate data from interconnected devices like sensors and actuators play a crucial role. In this scenario, when most of the oil and gas companies are either on their way or are already using the digital resources, data migration comes out as an imperative step.

The exploration and production (E&P) data that is accumulated over years have long been stored in warehouses or on-premise services. However, as the industry progresses towards digitization, the present data migration has become the need of the hour. We have listed out some of the business benefits of data migration, for the oil and gas sector:

Ensures data integrity

Data migration services often focus on maintaining data integrity. Moving data to an upgraded system with well-planned data migration services ensure the business’s continuity, by carefully securing data integrity.

Lowers storage costs

Migrating to data centers may have initial costs but is sure to save you from storage costs in the long run. It reduces the cost of maintenance of storage, training costs, etc. Also with efficient data migration, unwanted or uncleaned data can be filtered out, making room for more space on the server(s). Thus giving you more storage space with lesser costs.

Improves Flexibility

Leveraging the expertise of data migration service providers allows minimal disruptions to your business operations. Your team can essentially focus on creating better plans to improve your business.

Scalable Resources

Migrating data to an advanced platform helps you to upgrade and leverage industry-specific applications. This makes your business at par with the latest digitally-driven technological advancements, improving overall efficiency. 

Better Data Back-Up

Data migration to a cloud-based or hybrid platform gives your business better backup options. You need not worry about losing data over server failure, as you will always have a data backup.

Improves Overall Productivity

With automation technologies seeping into the realm of data migration services, it helps businesses to boost their productivity. Optimized technology due to the upgraded data centers improves overall operation time and enhances the efficiency of the system.

Data quality in the Oil & Gas industry

What remains constant is the need for quality and reliable data that facilitates accurate and timely decisions especially for the oil and gas industry, where safety and environmental stakes depend on the data-based decisions.

Therefore oil and gas companies need to give due importance to data management. Maintaining data quality throughout the process is one of the challenges in implementing an efficient data management plan. 

Some of the key elements of data to be qualified as quality data in the oil and gas industry are listed here.

• Data must be truthful. It must reflect the realities of the market and the required conditions.
• Data must be complete in every sense. There must not be any trailing data and ambiguity.
• Data must be consistent. The data set values and related nomenclature must be uniform across the data set to ensure data values in one data set are in alignment with those of another data set.
• Data must be up to date. It must be accurate concerning the time-related changes.

Data Migration Challenges in the Oil and Gas Industry

Lack of expertise, proper planning, and data governance culminates in a poorly managed data migration which can ultimately create losses for the company. Also in the case of large migration, many companies lack access to data preparation software and skills. Many do not have the budget to hire a specialist firm to get assistance.

Data automation helps companies to overcome these challenges. The emergence of big data and data analytics, data migration services, and data integration services, has played a crucial role in catalyzing digital transformation for the O&G industry.

Big data in tandem with cloud computing also reap the best fruits of digital transformation that empower companies to embrace I4.0 with full vigor. Together with these technological advancements data migration services help companies in extracting quality data and map them easily to the target source.

Conclusion

Industry 4.0 is the future that O&G companies like any other industries must gear up for. With growing data demands, data migration services from experts at Utthunga help companies deploy the best data migration and data integration practices.