Microsoft is the Leading Cloud Provider for the Oil & Gas Industry

A recent study published by Kimberlite Oilfield Research with 289 geologist and geophysicists worldwide shows Microsoft as the leading cloud provider serving the G&G community of the oil & gas industry.

49% of the respondents interviewed report using Microsoft/Azure as their cloud provider followed by 14% of respondents citing use of Google as their cloud provider and 6% using IBM. Clearly Microsoft is leading the way in serving the oil & gas industry as it begins to increase use and adoption of the cloud. While only 7% of G&G applications worldwide are accessed using the cloud today, G&G professionals worldwide expect that number to grow to approximately 23% of G&G applications being accessed from the cloud in two years.

63% of the oil & gas operators interviewed report that they expected the vendors to manage their software in the cloud while approximately 37% of operators plan to manage this task in-house.

Security and privacy issues are the leading concerns regarding use of the cloud among oil & gas operators with 70% of the respondents citing concerns regarding the security and privacy of their data. Clearly, the industry providers will have to step up efforts to provide improved information security and to gain the confidence from their customers. Other key concerns cited by oil & gas operators worldwide include reliability/accessibility/uptime cited by 26% of operators interviewed followed by bandwidth requirements cited by 13% of operators and data transfer/speed cited by 11% of operators.