The Digital Cloud

In this series of posts we are looking at the challenges facing any organisation who wants to effectively manage their information. I am using the Oil industry as an example but I am sure that most of these challenges will exist in any organisation.

Challenge 1 - A data explosion

In common with all industries and ourselves as consumers we are all facing a massive explosion of data driven largely by digital content. For the oil industry which has always worked with a huge amount of information, a lot of it technical data (see chart below courtesy of Chevron), this overall background growth is compounded by an accelerating parallel growth in its technical data.

Taking Chevron as an example. Chevron has over 6000 Terabytes (or 6 Petabytes if you prefer) of data, of which;

• 70 % is technical data
• 25% is "normal" business data
• and 5% is financial data.

Huge data growth

But listen to the growth statistics, the technical data grew by 80% last year alone! While the business data has grown by 60% in each of the last two years!

This means Chevron's data is growing by a factor of 10 every 5 years, and they are certainly not unique in the industry. And that's probably not the worst of it, new and potential large new categories of data are being created that are probably not even being counted yet. How about the growing amounts of digital surveillance data or the logistical data that the growing use of RFID technology is going to drive?

A business challenge and opportunity

As more and more new "intelligent" technologies become available, creating and consuming data and requiring robust information systems to enable them, the ability to avoid "information overload" and take advantage would seem to me to be a critical core business skill. What do you think?