Statoil is a large upstream oil and gas company with many physical installations both onshore and offshore. All of these installations, and the logistics operations that support them, use an increasing number of interconnected devices with varying degrees of capability and smartness to improve their operation. As an organization, we have many years of collected experience with the types of devices that are now being called the Internet of Things (IoT). We would like to share some of the trends, challenges, and opportunities that we see in this area and discuss its importance for the future of our installations and the software that is required to utilize their full potential.
We will present different aspects of what IoT means in the context of a large oil- and gas-producing company and how it affects the way we think about software and software architecture. We have worked with interconnected devices of different kinds for many years and have some thoughts on future challenges in this area that we would like to share with the SATURN community. We will organize the discussion around four main topics:
While we do not promise answers, we think that we can provide a perspective on these challenges from a large industry actor that can serve as a starting point for discussion on the path to some insights into how the IoT affects the way we think about software architecture.