The development of new technology for improving E&P has been one of the recent bright spots in the oil and gas industry. High-resolution aerial surveys, 3-D seismic exploration, subsea light detection and ranging, and other tools have proven incredibly valuable. The recent Nalcor success story is one such example. The combination of a satellite survey, a 2-D seismic scan and a 3-D follow-up eventually yielded $758 million in commitments for the company.

Unfortunately, the tremendous volume of data generated comes with unanticipated costs. The switch to 3-D scans alone has increased the size of files at least sevenfold, leading to multiterabyte datasets. These files need to be securely stored. They have to be protected so employees don’t lose access if a disaster strikes an office or a data center. Files created in one location often need to be accessed in another part of the world for analysis or collaboration.

Until recently, each of these functions would require a different solution, and as a company’s data grew exponentially, the associated costs and capex would rise just as fast. The traditional way to expand storage capacity, for example, has been to buy more storage hardware from a vendor. Yet this puts the buyer in a difficult position. IT has to predict how much storage the organization will consume over the next three to five years and then incur a major capital expense. But what if IT can’t predict capacity? What if an unexpected exploration project generates massive new data volumes? Companies that underestimate end up blowing their budgets to buy additional storage before the typical three-year cycle is done.

In the old world of file storage and protection, the kind of data growth that oil and gas firms are seeing today would have been an intractable problem—especially in an unstable market. The cloud has changed all that. Cloud storage has given rise to a new breed of companies that allow oil and gas enterprises to store, protect, manage and extend access to unlimited datasets at lower and predictable price points. These companies have transformed file storage from a capital-intensive expense to a cost-effective service. In doing so, they ensure that enterprise files function purely as an asset, not a budget-straining liability.

What is cloud storage?

Despite its ethereal name, cloud storage is a very real and reliable construct. The cloud is essentially a series of large connected data centers. Once data are moved to one of these facilities, they are copied within that data center and then replicated again to additional geographically distant data centers. This way, if an individual piece of hardware within the facility or even an entire data center were to fail, copies of the data remain accessible.

In the public cloud storage model these data centers are designed, built and run by the behemoths of the technology world—the likes of Amazon, Microsoft, Google and IBM. They are secure, efficient and incredibly scalable, allowing companies to store unlimited volumes of data. By copying data within and across multiple facilities, cloud storage effectively does the work of protecting and distributing data automatically.

Boom or bust—data still grow

Consider a new exploration project that turns into a major productive well. Demand for data about the site will increase dramatically, both in terms of requests and number of users. If a company’s storage infrastructure is entirely built around on-premises hardware, this new demand and data could strain capacity and force the enterprise to buy additional expensive arrays. Storage costs will rise, and the cost of protecting those data will grow as well. Efficiently moving those files around the company will drive demands for network enhancements, wide area network optimization solutions and more.

The real dilemma is there is only a one-in-10 chance that a new exploration will yield success. Nevertheless, enterprises need to store, protect and share the data from each new exploration site. So for each site that yields economic benefits, there are nine more that simply generate a lot of data. This is where cloud storage has proven to be so disruptive.

Efficiency, agility and savings

Cloud storage can deliver far more capacity for the same dollar invested than traditional storage along with the potential for increased efficiency, agility and savings. However, enterprises cannot simply send their files to cloud storage and retrieve them at will. The cloud stores chunks of data as objects, not files. Large enterprises need a solution that works between cloud storage and all of the enterprise’s offices and data centers. Nasuni connects enterprise file systems with cloud storage in a way that frees companies from the limitations of local hardware while also expanding what they can do with their files.

Once a company embraces this new model of data storage, the pre-existing hardware in a given office or data center remains in place as the local workhorse. From the end-user perspective the system still has the look and feel of a traditional on-premises storage solution. But these previously finite arrays now become linked to unlimited, distributed pools of secure, cost-effective storage. In this model the files from a new exploration project—indeed, all business files across the entire organization—are encrypted and pushed to a secure cloud storage volume. Frequently accessed files are still cached and stored on local hardware, enabling companies to continue to get the most of their expensive pre-existing infrastructure. But older, infrequently accessed data move off these expensive arrays to the cost-effective cloud.

This service-based model allows enterprises to save money and avoid capex, but it also creates entirely new business advantages. For example, all changes made to files are transferred to the cloud within minutes. As a result, users across the company can securely and easily access the most recent versions of files. End users on different continents can collaborate on the same projects without delay, even with the most recent version of very large files. Legacy technologies like VPN and replication break down when serving more than a handful of sites. For large global organizations, cloud is the “killer app” that makes true collaboration possible.

Undervalued strength of the cloud

When properly implemented, the cloud-based service model also is incredibly stable. Because of the way the cloud works, copying data within and across data centers, company files remain accessible even in the event of a major regional disaster. This stability is really one of the undervalued strengths of cloud storage. Many large companies are starting to catch on as the stability and disaster-proof availability are driving more organizations to take a completely cloud-based approach.

Nasuni has helped global enterprises in multiple industries address file growth through a service that saves them money and enhances efficiency across the company. In each case the story is the same. An essential new technology is creating a massively expensive file growth problem. The solution wouldn’t be possible without cloud storage, a fundamentally disruptive entity that every large global enterprise should be looking to embrace.

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