Oil and gas industry concerned about IT storage

Oil and gas IT executives are concerned about managing growing data storage, as well as regulatory compliance and facilities management, according to storage provider EMC.

EMC held its Energy Solutions Day in Abu Dhabi in June, during which the IT management of oil and gas companies talked about their concerns with managing growing information stores while minimising downtime and enabling collaboration.

"Despite the rising oil price, companies in the energy sector are still looking at ways to maximise performance through more efficient operations. Solid and secure information infrastructures enable them to protect critical company data and strategically leverage their information assets while streamlining their operations," said Mohammed Amin, regional manager at EMC MENA.

According to the company, back-up and recovery of data is a key consideration for oil and gas companies due to the amount of important information that is usually distributed around a number of different sites or offices.

EMC added that energy IT staff need to be able to store data securely and cost-effectively, back it up, archive it and ensure that it can be restored promptly and fully should a system outage occur. They also need to be able to facilitate collaboration between knowledge workers in exploration and production, process safety, operations, and other functional areas. Sessions at the Energy Solutions Day focused on streamlining the flow of key information and safeguarding data such as exploration maps, production stores, and other key processes and how to capture, manage, and share all upstream and downstream content in a secure repository to support business and IT processes.