There are many challenges facing the IT, database & knowledge management teams within the oil & gas industry today including:

• Reducing data management costs
• Managing high volumes of data
• Maintaining data from multiple sources
• Meeting the demands for access to information from a changing workforce
• Proving timely access to accurate & up-to-date information

The volume of data available today to oil & gas companies presents a significant challenge. How does your organisation transform raw data into information & knowledge to enable the business to make effective, profitable decisions? How does the data manager ensure that the data is maintained, up-to-date & presented to the user in a timely manner so that they, in turn, can make profitable decisions?

This challenge is not just restricted to the data available internally- the internet has made a number of data types readily available at almost no cost. It falls to the data manager to blend information from a number of sources ? government, public & proprietary to provide the company?s decision makers with a single view of the information. Which data source can be trusted? How do you keep the data up-to-date? How do you ensure that everyone is using the right information?

At the same time the there are tremendous changes to the profile of the workforce ? particularly in the oil & gas industry. Judging by the membership of the industry?s professional bodies, the average age of the employees in the industry is rising & there are significant risks associated with the ?big crew change?. These experienced people are taking with them years of knowledge about where to go to find reliable data. As these experienced people are replaced by generation ?google?, they expect information to be presented to them in new & interactive ways. Equally as new blood is brought into the industry, the knowledge within the business developed over many years can be eroded. New people simply may not know where to go to get the information they desperately need to make effective decisions.

So are Web Services the answer? Can Web Services be the ?Babel Fish? for today?s fast moving businesses in the oil & gas sector ? helping to translate the noise of large volumes & multiple sources of data into information & knowledge? Advances in integration technology such as Service Oriented Architecture & web services can provide techniques to address these challenges in new ways.

Web Services enable data to be integrated into the users? workflow ? making it more efficient & easier for them to find the data they need to make decisions. The user does not need to know what type of data is available nor where it is stored ? they simply enter the criteria that they are looking for (such as the well or basin name).

Web Services can reduce the time & effort that you currently spend managing data & information. The use of outsourcing - particularly for IT resources ? is prevalent throughout the industry as a way of controlling costs. Web Services enable your data information users to access the most up-to-date information without the requirement for expensive data warehousing ? the user can simple ?mash-up? the data as they need it.

In addressing this topic, the presentation will cover ?

• what is meant by web-services
• the benefits of accessing data on demand from the source
• the role of standards in interoperability & integration
• how to reduce the time spent managing data
• managing costs & increasing flexibility through information hosting
• challenges of a distributed data management architecture

The presentation will be illustrated with real life examples from Pioneer, Petra Direct Connect & Google Earth.

Short Bio: 

Phil has an extensive, 15 year, track record both as a user & Product Manager of GIS technologies. He joined IHS at the start of 2007 and has Product Management responsibility for several international solutions (including IRIS21, Probe, EDIN/EDIN-GIS). Phil is also responsible for taking the new IHS Enerdeq platform to market.

Prior to joining IHS, Phil spent 7 years at MapInfo where, as well as having Product Management responsibility, he was also responsible for the definition of the EMEA industry focused marketing strategy.