According to the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP), Canada’s oil & gas industry supports 550,000 jobs nationwide, and the oil sands alone are forecasted to create 905,000 new jobs by 2035.1 As the industry continues to grow, the technology that is required to support this growing industry will need to evolve to keep organizations competitive. Implementing solutions that enable mobility for the modern workforce can have many benefits for an organization – including business continuity, employee mobility and increased productivity, supporting a green technology environment and lower operating costs. In today’s work situation, not every employee has the luxury to work from a traditional office setting. However, without the traditional walls of a cubicle or office, companies still require all employees to be productive – regardless of where their desk is located.
The 2013 Citrix Mobility in Business Report found that 71 percent of organizations consider their mobility strategy to be either very important or of the utmost importance to their business. The report also found that the ability to work freely anywhere, on any device, is important to employees and beneficial to businesses. More than half of the respondents noted that increased productivity and improved responsiveness to work-related needs as a positive outcome. Robust virtualization solutions enable mobile device management, mobile application management, and mobile data management, and in order to keep up with the rate at which the oil and gas industry is growing, organizations have to consider their employee’s needs as mobility expectations change.
To stay ahead of the curve, organizations should look to virtualization solutions, which will allow them to manage and secure data on devices remotely. In the oil & gas industry, these solutions can help mitigate the risks associated with data loss, theft or damage on individual devices, whether it’s a senior executive’s laptop or a field engineer’s smartphone. Furthermore, they enable business continuity as virtualization solutions can reduce interruptions in the field. Desktop virtualization provides remote access to deal with isolated incidents without interrupting the entire chain of business.
For employees, virtualization enables mobility which can lead to increased productivity and cost savings, particularly in a scenario where a shared services model is in place. Many in the oil and gas industry engage in a variety of activities that range from discovering new reservoirs, field development, engineering, drilling, offshore installations, operations and maintenance, all of which are taking place with staff distributed remotely worldwide. Providing access to relevant information from any device can mean the difference between meeting a deadline or providing crucial information to an employee working onsite at a drilling rig and delivering supplies to a site on time. With the ability to complete a job on time and safely often results in increased job satisfaction and employee retention – both great benefits from a company perspective.
Employees like those in the oil and gas industry often work with applications that require high-performance graphics. These applications often can put a strain on servers and slow desktop workloads. These challenges are solved by Citrix and NVIDIA, a world leader in visual computing technologies. Easy management, business continuity and added security that virtualized desktops bring are extended to graphic - intensive applications and users. With virtualized environments, those in oil and gas based industries can see increased IT staff efficiency and lower costs. In addition, virtualized graphics-intensive desktops and applications gives oil and gas businesses the flexibility to manage its people and operations. Accessible on any device, including tablets, Mac and Windows laptops, the combined solution provides compression and graphics acceleration technologies to optimize professional 3D graphics apps over low-bandwidth, high-latency networks.
Considering the business needs behind why an organization would seek out a virtualization solution, three stand out as the biggest drivers in the oil and gas industry: mobility, security, and business continuity.
Mobility:
The rise of mobile devices in the enterprise is especially significant for the oil and gas industry, making it possible for companies to communicate and collaborate within their organizations and with contractors, business partners and outsourcing providers. However, most 3D applications are Windows-based, optimized for a full-size screen and relying on right-click inputs for full functionality. For tablets to fulfill their potential, they need to be able to provide the full functionality of these apps through touch-screen inputs with a satisfying user experience. By centralizing and virtualizing 3D apps in the datacenter, companies can leverage mobile optimization policies built into the remote protocol to intelligently touch-enable Window-based application controls. Users gain the ability to use software easily, without the need for source code changes.
Security:
As organizations expand their collaboration with the adoption of shared services business models across the industry, they need more effective ways to safeguard intellectual property and data across this virtual workforce. Many choose to lock down the corporate network and provide remote access via VPN solutions, but this approach is actually counterproductive, extending the secured network to unsecured remote devices. By hosting apps and workstations in the datacenter, and sending only pixel display data to the endpoint device through a secure remote protocol, they can eliminate the need to poke a hole through the firewall with a VPN.
Business Continuity:
Business continuity is one of the biggest factors in determining the success of an operation in the oil and gas industry. Each minute of oil production represents a considerable amount of money, so lost time comes at a high cost. Virtualization solutions help to avoid interruptions in the fields where complex geographic, climate, connectivity and infrastructure factors come into play. The solutions allow for remote operation without interruption in the worst of conditions so it is possible to manage an operation with alternative solutions as needed.
Early adopters have already been realizing the benefits of virtualization. Now, with recent technological innovations and falling hardware costs, centralization is quickly becoming a mainstream strategy. Faced with more complete, high-performance and cost-effective solutions than ever, organizations are moving forward and virtualizing their high-end graphics apps as a way to meet the demands of today’s business environment. Real-time collaboration, follow-the-sun work cycles and user mobility help companies improve productivity, while the centralization of desktops, apps and data improves security for intellectual property and information.
As the energy and oil and gas industries continue to grow at a rapid pace, business needs are changing and new strategies to stay competitive should be implemented. When it comes to both operational and employee satisfaction, virtualization is one of the best ways to stay secure, mobile and attractive to prospective employees and business partners. It allows organizations to stay ‘green’ and keep costs down, and overall do their work at a more productive and effective level.
About the Author
Michael Murphy is the vice-president and country manager of Citrix Canada, a global company that enables mobile work styles, empowering people to work and collaborate from anywhere.
