Looking Forward: Industry Trends in Challenging Times
September has seen continued and sustained changes. Along with those changes come new trends.
Join me and fellow energy industry professionals from the oil and gas and the utility industries for a lively discussion on how energy companies and vendors may adapt and change given that everything has gotten different.
The agenda for this free online session can be found here, where you may also RSVP for the event.
Join us at this online event:
September 2020: The Future of Software in the Energy Industry
Software Colorado
Date: Wednesday, September 30, 2020
Time: 5:00pm - 6:30pm MDT
Moderator:
Steve Cooper, VP, Quorum Software
Speakers:
Robert White, CEO, Whitestar
Bob MacKnight, Executive Product Management Director, IHS Markit
Jaylene Kunze, CFO, Uplight
Gerry Conroy, Principal, Ridgeline Consulting
As Mark Twain once said, “The rumours of my death have been greatly exaggerated,” so too is much of the gloom and doom speculation currently overshadowing the oil and gas industry. While there will be a gradual transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy over the course of decades, and we see many traditional energy companies investing and exploring renewable energy, there is currently no substitute for, nor will there be in the short to medium terms, for cheap and reliable traditional energy sources.
WhiteStar remains healthy and is on track to grow healthily this year. Indeed, in the middle of the pandemic we added a major oil company and a major independent to our expanding client list. We have also maintained our existing base. This is a vote for solid GIS data as the foundation for a GIS mapping system, and customers are not cavalierly throwing that away.
“This is a vote for solid GIS data as the foundation for a GIS mapping system, and customers are not cavalierly throwing that away.”
Another trend we see is towards web streaming as techs can work remotely with that from their homes and do not need to be in proximity to their corporate enterprise portals.
The more web streams that are available for different types of data, the easier it becomes to “mash them up” to produce amazing business results and yet avoid the traditional data management hurdles. Cloud data and SaaS software drive all of this, of course. Unfortunately there are significant security issues such as state actors and ransomware attacks that require eternal vigilance, though that is true no matter where your computer resides.
Customers do expect to see a return on GIS data and investments and are looking to quantify that ever more carefully. For many old workflows, for example the automation of work orders and manual document conversion and mapping, even a small improvement can have a tremendous impact on a bottom line.
Robert C. White, Jr.
President and CEO
WhiteStar Corporation
