Good Data Management Practice

Introduction

The importance of good Data Management has been increasingly recognized by

shipping industry as well as oil and gas industry. As our oil and gas facilities are
mainly located in offshore and remoted location. Effective Data Management
becomes more challenging in our company. As application of Information
Technology (IT) becomes essential part which involved in our business, huge amount
of data will be generated and received throughout daily operation. Effectiveness of
our operation is highly depend on well-organized Data Management practice which
could also assist in our decision making process. Good Data Management practice
not only improve our efficiency but also increase cooperate governance level which
could enhance confident of our customer.

What is Data Management?

Data Management refers to a group of activities relating to the planning,

development, implementation and administration of systems for the acquisition,
storage, security, retrieval, dissemination, archiving and disposal of data. (The Office
of the Deputy Prime Minister, 2005)

Why do we need data management?

First, it is very important to understand the different between the term of Data and
Information. Data are raw facts which is used to describe the facts have not yet been
processed. In order words, data have no meaning. Information is processed data
and its meaning has been revealed (Rob & Coronel, 2000). Therefore, quality of
information strongly depends on quality of data. Good data management can
contribute to company in the following ways (ReachForce, 2019):

- Increase productivity
When the data are will organized, anyone colleagues who need to access can
easily find what they need. Time of searching data is consuming company
valuable resources (Manpower) which reduce the productivity of company.

- Reduces security risk

Company data only available to those who are authorized to access are very
 important aspect. Proper data management shall well define the access right of
the data to each company individual.

- Minimizes data loss

Data redundancy or data backup is one of the biggest issue of data management.
Data management plan shall clearly state that what if primary storage fail, what is
the secondary storage that colleagues can find what they need.

- Improves data quality

Good data management shall also allow regular maintenance of the company
data. For example, some of the data management software is able to
automatically cleans and organize the data. Some of the outdated, false and
duplicate data are therefore removed at regular interval.

Storage system: Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID) and Cloud-Based

systems

There are mainly two types of storage system offered to users to store their data,
namely RAID and Cloud-Based systems. The following is going to discuss what are
those systems and which one is more suitable to our company.

RAID
RAID is an array, or group, of multiple independent physical drives that provide high
performance and fault tolerance. RAID drive groups improve data storage reliability
and fault tolerance compared to single-drive storage system. Data loss resulting from
a drive failure can be prevented by reconstructing missing data from the remaining
drives (Cisco, 2019).

The key idea of the RAID is data redundancy instead of data backup. Redundant data
storage provides as real-time fail-safe against hard drive failure rather than an actual
backup of your data (Lloyd, 2019). RAID system contains different level and each
level is denoted by number. The following table shows example of typical RAID
levels:
Table 1: RAID levels and their characteristics (Schulz, 2011)

RAID Level Characteristics

0 No availability, data stripped across disks for performance

1 Mirroring data across two or more disks gives good performance

and availability at the expense of capacity
0+1 / 1+0 Data Stripe plus mirroring or mirroring with stripe provides mix of
availability and performance
3 Stripes with single dedicated parity disk

4 Similar to RAID 3 with block-level parity protection

5 Striping with rotating parity protection

6 Disk striping with dual parity. Reduces data exposure during a

rebuild with larger-capacity HDDs

Cloud-based systems

Cloud-based systems, or known as Cloud computing is a method of providing a set of

shared computing resources that includes applications, computing, storage,
networking, development, and deployment platforms as well as business processes
(Hurwitz, et al., 2012).

Cloud-based systems contain three levels of service models, including Infrastructure

as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Software as a Service (SaaS). The
following figure shows very good illustration how three levels work.
Figure 1: IaaS, PaaS and SaaS Breakdown (Hou, 2019)

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

Simply speaking, IaaS is able to provide “Virtual assets”, including servers, network
devices and storage disks to the user. Traditionally, IT team of a company need to
build and support all IT infrastructure, including installation of servers / software,
maintenance and ensure security. With the concept of cloud computing, users are
able to virtually access the services which substitute for servers, firewalls and load
balancers. Space for installation of servers and other equipment is no longer
required (Bhatia, 2019).

Platform as a Service (PaaS)

PaaS is on top of IaaS, vendor provides hardware and software to enable user to
develop applications. Therefore, user able to deploy user-built applications on a
virtualized cloud platform. In addition, PaaS includes middleware, databased,
development tools, and some runtime support such as Web 2.0 and Java. Company
can focus on main business activities instead of underlying IT infrastructure and
platform development (Bhatia, 2019).

Software as a Service (SaaS)

As highest level, SaaS platforms make software available to users over the internet.
Therefore, users are not required to install and run software applications on own
computer. Whole software application is delivered via internet. Company no longer
need to engage an IT specialist to download the software onto multiple computers.
However, the system maintenance, regulation compliance and security of data would
be vendor responsibility and control of IT system by company is very limited.

Comparison between RAID and Cloud-based systems

There are various aspects that we can compare between 2 systems. The following is
going to compare 2 systems in different ways, including Installation location, space
requirement, cost, bandwidth requirement, security level and flexibility.

Table 2: Comparison between RAID and Cloud-based systems

RAID Cloud-based system

Installation Locally Nil

Location
Space Large amount of space for Not required
requirement server and other IT equipment
Cost High, huge investment on IT Low, only subscription fee and
equipment other minor fees
Bandwidth Nil High speed and stable internet
requirement connection is required
Security level Company can control its own Depend on vendor company.
security level and standard
Flexibility High Low, tailor made service may not
be available as constraint by
vendor platform

Not like other industry at shore, offshore oil and gas industry has some unique
features need to be considered before choosing most suitable IT solution. For the
offshore oil and gas industry, the facilities, including oil rig, Floating Production,
Storage and Offloading (FPSO) are mainly located in remote and offshore location.
Internet connection is mainly delivered by using satellite connection. Facilities
located offshore are also exposed under extreme condition, for example storm, high
wind, high well which could cause heavy rolling and pitching of the facilities. Finally,
offshore facilities usually are jam packed with various equipment and space is very
limited.
Based on above finding, it is concluded that Cloud-based system is more suitable to
our company due to following reasons:

Installation Location and space requirement

Server and other IT equipment are extremely vulnerable to vibration and excess
movement. As discussed before, offshore infrastructures are exposed under extreme
condition, IT equipment is not suitable be installed in offshore facilities. Moreover,
installation of equipment requires considerable amount of space. Space may not
available in offshore facilities.

Bandwidth requirement
One of the essential requirement of using Cloud-based system is high speed and
stable internet connection. The only way for offshore facilities to access internet is
though satellite. Traditionally, internet connection via satellite is slow and costly.
However, thanks to the modern technology development, the speed of internet using
satellite is significantly improved and the cost is more affordable.

Security
Although company has limited control on security level of the cloud service, cloud
service provider has its own security policy to ensure that data are stored in cloud
securely. When choosing cloud service provider, security policy, auditing and
compliance of provider should be particularly taken into consideration. Access
control and system protection by the cloud service provider should also be focused
(Mitchell & Alcock, 2011).

Conclusion
Data management not only improves productivity of the company, but also shows
our governance to our customer. This report serves to provide an overview of data
management to colleagues to increase your awareness. Owing to our industry’s
unique features, various considerations need to be taken into account before
choosing suitable IT solution for data storage and management. At this modern age,
cloud-based system becomes a solution to company to handle our sensitive data.
Contrast between traditional RAID system and cloud-based system is also addressed
in this report. All colleagues are encouraged to study and understand the rationale
of choose IT solution.
Reference List

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