7 Reasons That Software as a Service Is the Future of the Energy Industry

The energy industry is evolving – fast. Once known for old-school systems and inefficient processes, oil and gas companies are now embracing the cloud as the fast track to digital transformation.

As a fully cloud-native solution, we’re proud to help organizations take advantage of all the efficiencies and opportunities that cloud computing provides. We also know that change can be uncomfortable. That’s why we’re here every step of the way to help oil and gas businesses transition to software-as-a-service (SaaS) systems.

Why is SaaS so critical to the future of the energy industry? Let’s take a look.

Enhanced security

Security is the number one priority for most organizations. Nothing else matters if your users, workloads, and data aren’t secure. It’s also, however, increasingly hard to manage internally. Bad actors continue to come up with more sophisticated threats, and more of them. Attack surfaces keep growing in size and complexity. Security professionals are virtually impossible to hire and retain, with 3.5 million unfilled cybersecurity jobs globally.

SaaS solutions, initially thought of as less secure, have become the best defense against this myriad of challenges. Vendors that rely on public clouds like AWS, including W Energy, gain access to the world’s leading security operations and best practices. Our customers, in turn, can rest assured that their data is protected across the entire lifecycle – and that their security posture will continue to evolve and improve as AWS and its peers innovate to stay ahead of cybercrime.

The latest innovations

Speaking of innovation, SaaS solutions enable oil and gas companies to leverage the latest capabilities and technology. This starts with the vendors. Cloud-native organizations like ours use the huge suite of services available through providers like AWS to deliver cutting-edge functionality. Because we aren’t spending time writing mountains of code, and don’t have to maintain a dozen legacy versions of the tool, we have more time to push the limits and focus on delivering the transformational technology that our customers need.

Automatic upgrades

Oil and gas companies, in turn, get a turnkey solution that’s always up to date. Instead of painful, expensive upgrades, the software simply updates whenever a new version is released. It’s hard to emphasize this enough. Instead of waiting for the right time and budget to upgrade your systems – which we all know can take months or even years – the most recent capabilities are automatically at your fingertips. That time and money can then be allocated somewhere with much more value than upgrading old software.

Lower costs

Another advantage to a SaaS solution from a cloud-native provider: lower costs. Because our costs to build and maintain our products are lower in the cloud, we pass those cost savings on to you. The cloud is infinitely scalable. Instead of fixed CapEx, it’s OpEx that can be optimized every day, week, month, and year. We pay for only what we need and use. As a result, we’re able to provide a better product than traditional on-premises solutions at a lower cost.

Scalability and agility

The scalable nature of the cloud doesn’t only reduce costs for vendors and users alike. It also gives organizations the flexibility to dial in the precise parameters required by the business at any given moment. This agility is particularly critical for oil and gas companies, which face volatile industry conditions that can change on a dime. The cloud enables IT teams to respond quickly, adjust up and down as necessary, and outperform the competition with more efficient, cost-effective operations. 

Seamless integrations

Many oil and gas companies rely on a federation of point products and processes that may or may not “talk” to each other. This causes tremendous inefficiencies and lack of productivity. Data is captured in silos and spreadsheets, unable to be mined or acted on without significant manual intervention. 

Not with SaaS. Our orchestration of services approach connects all your systems, from the back office to field ops, into an integrated, enterprise-grade platform. Further, it not only talks amongst itself, it integrates with your existing on-prem infrastructure. That means you don’t lose any of your current data or functionality – you just get a whole lot more.

Powerful visibility and analysis

A unified digital data set opens up countless possibilities for visualization and analysis. Because SaaS solutions play well with others via APIs, it’s easy to connect to your analytics platform of choice, like Tableau, PowerBI, or Amazon QuickSight. A stable data layer also lets you copy data back into your systems without having to create an integration layer.

Many organizations worry about monitoring when they move from the data center to the cloud. No need. Our SaaS offering includes a powerful monitoring layer so that you can always view your specific instance and have full visibility into uptime and more.

A SaaS solution that unifies back office and ERP software with field operations technology delivers all these benefits and more. For oil and gas companies, digital transformation powered by the cloud is the foundation of innovation, competitive advantage, and a business built for tomorrow.