Houston’s Oil & Gas Sector Leverages Data Center Services To Boost Performance And Innovation
Houston stands out as the world’s energy capital because it is home to more than 500 oil and gas exploration firms and houses 4,600 energy-related companies. Plus, Houston’s nine refineries produce over 2.3 million barrels of crude oil every day.
The Greater Houston Partnership makes the city’s dominance known by emphasizing the area’s 1,100 oilfield service companies, 600 exploration and production firms, and 180 pipeline transportation establishments. The I-10 Corridor manages to house 44 out of 128 publicly traded oil and gas firms. Only three cities in the world have more engineers than Houston.
These numbers make Houston’s dominance obvious. Dominance, however, does not mean that an industry can get comfortable with its current processes. After all, oil and gas companies in Houston compete with more than 100 solar-related companies and more than 30 wind-related companies. This anchor industry delivers unequaled strength to Houston businesses; however, the oil and gas industry is also known for being averse to change more than any other global industry.
Houston’s Oil and Gas Industry Is Poised for Technological Adoption
The pitfalls and challenges of COVID-19 only hastened innovation and technology adoption, shining a light on the need for greater digital transformation for Houston businesses. The coming wave of technology places data analytics, cybersecurity, data sciences, and artificial intelligence as imperative technologies for driving business production efficiencies in the digital age.
The success of the energy giants like Phillips66, Halliburton, Conoco Phillips, alongside startups like Tachys, M1neral, and Voyager, will finally race one another as their speed to embrace and leverage technology solutions defines the competition and drives an innovation mindset. Not to mention making use of advanced connectivity to reduce costs and optimize operations alone adds up to over $250 billion in value to the industry’s operations by 2030, according to McKinsey’s research.
Vital Technology Partnerships Deliver the Competitive Solutions Houston Businesses Need
The potential value embedded in advanced computing, data analytics, and data management is more critical than ever. Houston’s oil and gas companies must embrace competitive solutions and capital investments in new technologies.
One of the leading ways for companies to become more competitive might surprise you. Houston data center services offer foundational digital infrastructure solutions, enhanced network connectivity, 2N redundancy, and a vital ecosystem partnership to accelerate Houston’s business’s digital transformation.
Introducing Element Critical’s Houston One Data Center
Houston One is one of the most secure, robust data centers in the Houston area featuring seven layers of security, remote asset monitoring, and 24x7x365 security staff on site. Element Critical’s Houston One offers distinctive platforms for customers of all sizes, including single cabinet retail, private cages or suites, and 15 MW high-performance dedicated data hall space.
Data halls are fully customizable with an entirely separate supporting infrastructure, deliverable in N, N+1, and 2N designs, and built to support high-density designs, including immersion-cooled deployments.
Houston oil and gas companies stand to realize extensive benefits from leveraging colocation data center space close and accessible to their businesses. But let’s take an even closer look at a couple of unique service opportunities that Houston One delivers to the Houston Data Center market.
Partnership Ecosystems Drive Technology Adoption While Businesses Focus on Core Competencies
There are many prominent examples of ecosystem partnerships among technology players, like Shell partnering with Amazon on big data analytics capabilities. This showcases the growing need for businesses to leverage technology partners and solutions that can exponentially grow their organization’s platform.
While some Houston businesses may still house their data centers on-site, enterprises are rapidly relinquishing the burden of managing data centers in-house. By pivoting in-house teams to accelerate the adoption of digital technology, businesses are also transitioning these operational expenses to a capital model. Companies that share data infrastructure buildings also save money by sharing the costs.
Houston One unlocks further value for businesses because our wholesale data center space allows customers fully customizable options. Whether our customers are seeking N, N+1, or 2N power configurations, the ability to choose their own power provider and pay for power right from the source, utilize immersion cooling for high-density deployments, or build a data hall entirely to their specifications – all this and more is possible with an Element Critical partnership.
Going Beyond Efficiency to Deliver Green Data Center Solutions
Greening up data centers is a hot topic. Businesses are generating more data than ever before in this data-driven economy, making the data center one of the most important pieces of business infrastructure today. Pressure is mounting for data center solutions that are energy-efficient, power-dense, deliver renewable power resources, and able to fully support the organization’s embedded Environmental, Social, and Governance Initiatives.
Houston One has set benchmarks across the globe for energy efficiency and power density – achieving a LEED Gold building certification. Nevertheless, at Element Critical, we choose to go beyond energy efficiency and focus on what resonates with our customers. The key to high-performance computing into the future resides in delivering data center services with renewable energy at scale. Not only do our wholesale data halls have a choose-your-own power provider option so customers can source power directly from the power provider for incredible cost savings, but this also allows customers to select renewable energy providers in the marketplace and source 100% renewable power. By bringing renewable energy into the IT market, we intend to make it easier for our customers to apply green energy credits from their use of colocation space to their corporate sustainability goals, facilitating green energy solutions right here in Houston, Texas.
Smarter Connectivity Solutions Is The Foundation For Fueling Technology and Supporting Hybrid IT Environments
Technology drivers such as advanced analytics, automation, and high-performance computing will unlock new capabilities across the energy sector. Pushing the limits of optimization means getting more and more out of the data businesses produce and leveraging data insights for better performance across the business’s platform. Yet, enabling advanced technologies requires smarter connectivity solutions.
Just imagine the possibilities. Advanced analytics can increase drilling operations productivity. Timely data collection can reduce energy consumption and emissions. Virtual enhancements can reduce time spent on maintenance and repairs. Connectivity improves supply chains and enhances demand management. Sensors in greater density can transmit greater volumes of predictive data to offer remedial actions for operations. The technology advances that make all this innovation possible also depend on stronger connectivity foundations.
Furthermore, organizations are delivering work across complex hybrid IT environments. Combining multi-cloud infrastructure, edge computing, and maintaining private data centers to safeguard intellectual property. Connectivity solutions improve the transmission of data across these various environments.
To realize the full promise of technology advances and coordinate workflows across a variety of IT environments, businesses require a chain of value players within their ecosystem. Securing their mission-critical data upon a connectivity backbone ensures a platform for innovation. And unlike an on-site or in-house data center, our Houston One facility is situated on the fiber optic backbone of Houston and houses 15+ carriers within our meet-me-rooms. From the edge of a business’s resources to their core platform in the data center, connectivity fuels performance and drives value from existing technologies right back into Houston businesses.
Element Critical’s Houston One data center delivers resilient, reliable, and customizable IT infrastructure for oil and gas companies right where the nation’s energy leaders are located – here in Houston. We are glad to be a neighbor and data center provider in the Houston market, ready to meet the unique high-performance computing and environmentally sustainable solutioning that the energy sector requires from their partner data center providers.
Learn more about Houston One here or simply request a tour.
