In this fast-paced industry, oil and gas workers rarely stay in one location for very long. Petroleum engineers often travel among company headquarters, regional facilities, and field locations. Geoscientists can be found shuttling among file rooms and prospective field locations, returning to corporate offices to analyze data and report findings. Even support people find themselves spread thin these days, covering ever-increasing territories with fewer colleagues to share the workload.

Fortunately, we live in a world where communication and access to information are no longer bound by a landline phone or office PC. Advancements in computing speed and the proliferation of computing devices as well as telephony broadband services have given us myriad connectivity options. It is now possible to weave computing deeply into the physical world — decoupling it from fixed locations and modes of interaction and integrating it more fully into our lives — both inside and outside the corporate network.

Going forward, the barriers will begin to dissolve among the three main screens or device interfaces that are used most often — home and office PCs; video conferencing systems; and mobile devices like smart phones, tablets, or PDAs. By equipping each of these screens with a common-user interface and similar set of capabilities, a worker’s transition from one device to another is a smooth one.

And it’s not just structured information like databases or unstructured information like documents and drawings that workers need to access; it’s also the experiential knowledge that people hold in their heads that can help address challenges as they occur.

For example, how many times have you worked onsite in the field and wished you could chat face to face with a colleague or have access to a document stored on your office hard drive? The desire to connect to people around the world can range from setting up a video conference with asset team members across four geographies to watching highlights of the Dallas Cowboys game on a mobile device together.

This form of constant connection will have a dramatic impact on oil and gas professionals — how they stay productive and solve industry challenges day to day.
In one scenario, a professional at his office computer is alerted by a real-time historian system to discrepancies in current readings for a particular well. He then finds and contacts a colleague working on location, sending the worker an instant message about the potential problem.

Through a mobile device, the field user is able to review the same data as her colleague to begin diagnosing the problem. She travels to the piece of equipment and initiates a collaboration session with an on-call expert in another location. Using the camera on her mobile device, she is able to share video from the site, helping the expert confirm the issue. She then initiates a work order to perform corrective maintenance that is recorded and saved in the problem status in the well’s file on a collaborative portal. Later that night, the office-based professional, wanting to see what happened with the original query, logs on to the portal from his home computer to see what corrective action was taken in the field.

This scenario illustrates how the user experience in a world of connected devices can span multiple physical and virtual spaces. IT departments can further enhance workforce connectivity by considering adopting technologies that enable such experiences, including:
• Unified Communications. Access to all communication forms, such
as e-mail, Voice-over Internet Protocol (VoIP), instant messaging (IM), or audio/video/Web conferencing from a single sign-on and single inbox.
• Presence. Ability to see resources available for assistance through online chatting and video on the IM client.
• Peer-to-peer technologies. Exchange information with another device directly, without having that information pass through a central server.
• Cloud computing. A remote workplace that allows team members to participate in multiple development projects simultaneously regardless of their physical location.

By integrating the technology forms professionals rely on daily, oil and gas corporations will succeed in driving down IT costs while investing in a future where flexibility will be fundamental to success.