Andrew Miller, Sr. Sales Engineer from Bit Stew Systems, showed me an oil and gas use case a short while ago. He was using real-time analytics to demonstrate how an energy company could monitor and respond to a natural disaster that might effect an oil and gas pipeline infrastructure. I was impressed by the visualizations he showed me and how he could interact with a map on the screen that was showing real-time analytical data fed in from a number of sources.

The demo shows some critical assets in the service territory in the north west of North America. That includes pipelines, block valves stations, initial injection stations, pumps, regulators and the like. We were able to see lots of details on the assets, and real-time status. Andrew simulated a natural disaster event (a fire), and that info would generally come from a live data feed and be overlaid on the map. We then looked at the affected assets and which ones were at risk. The really cool thing was the modeling of where the fire might spread to (based on weather). Response teams could be dispatched in real time to tackle the situation, and the situation monitored so that crews could be sent to where the fire was likely to spread to. Crew locations could be seen, again in real time.

Bit Stew's MIx Director? (formerly Grid Director?) works with Cisco IOx and enables industrial companies to discover actionable insights that optimize operational performance. Andrew talks about how it leverages Cisco IOx and therefore hardened infrastructure that might include Cisco CGR or ISR solutions can be implemented enabling 'fog computing' or edge computing as it's sometimes called.

IOx enables the analytics to be closer to the edge of the network. Closer to the sensors and devices that energy companies want to monitor. That relieves the pressure on the central IT sites and allows faster analysis at the source.

For more on the Bit Stew products go to the Cisco Marketplace. For more on the Bit Stew and Cisco relationship, click here.

Read the Bit Stew CEO interview with Kevin Collins here:

Fog Computing Becomes Clearer with Cisco IOx Solution

Along with a look at the Cisco and Bit Stew relationship here:

Cisco and Bit Stew Set Out to Transform the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) -One Customer at a Time

Also check out my interview with Franco Castaldini, VP Marketing, here:

Bit Stew and Cisco collaborate to bring intelligence and automation to the digital oil field

And, of course, for more on Cisco in the oil and gas industry, go to www.cisco.com/go/oilandgas.