A Welcomed Addition to the E&P Digital Landscape, Blockchain
Over the decades, energy companies have adopted many technologies and tools to enhance and advance their competitive advantage and business margins. Information Technology (IT) has played a significant role in those enhancements. Most recent examples in the news coming from AI, IoT and Cloud computing. Nonetheless, oil and gas is still struggling with few persistent data issues:
- security and data leakage
- siloed systems and/or a spaghetti of connections from ETLs, and
- reliability of data quality.
As a consequence, workflows and processes are still filled with examples of inefficiency and rework. But an emerging technology, Blockchain[1] may have the answer we’ve been waiting for.
Blockchain is a distributed ledger and crypto technology which brings with it the promise of connectivity, security and data reliability that we have not been able to achieve with past technology, and which was desperately needed in this very specialized industry.
Data Integrity Baked In Business Processes
Because it is possible to enter wrong data in blockchain applications, thinking about how to capture and disseminate good data quality using blockchain applications is important to ensure quality analysis and sound, informed decision making.
Blockchains can live alongside the current data architecture as a data governance layer and passively monitor quality. However, baking data integrity into business applications from the ground up is the best way forward.
Along with distributed ledger and crypto signatures, blockchain also offers a smart contract feature which allows us to re-engineer and re-imagine processes and how we all work together. Thinking through the last-mile problem to build data integrity into the application from the ground up will be one of the key success factors that will make or break your ultimate solution. New jobs will arise to ensure that correct information is being captured, as specialists that can verify information validity will be a must. These specialists will be similar to insurance adjustors that testify a claim is valid prior to insurance payment.
The further good news is blockchain data will only need to be verified once. No more having to verify the same data over and over again!!! Who has time for that?!
Recommended Resources
[1] A plethora of material describing blockchain are everywhere. Make sure you are reading curated articles. One good reference is from IBM (not endorsing their technology, Certis is vendor agnostic): Blockchain for dummies
For additional information, architecting, implementing and training on successful Blockchain projects please contact us at info@certisinc.com
Certis Information Services, Inc. 