Over three decades the Canadian company Zedi has helped oil and gas producers make better business decisions through remote asset management and control . Now it ’ s reaching out to a range of industries as they leverage the opportunities of digitization , automation and the Industrial Internet of Things
ZEDI INC
Over three decades the Canadian company Zedi has helped oil and gas producers make better business decisions through remote asset management and control . Now it ’ s reaching out to a range of industries as they leverage the opportunities of digitization , automation and the Industrial Internet of Things
Zedi celebrates its 30th birthday this year . It ’ s best known in the oil and gas industry for its software-as-a-service ( SaaS ) support to the upstream sector and for its Smart-Alek device which offers complete remote flow monitoring via cell or satellite , and works under almost any weather condition .
By allowing producers to outsource construction and operation of remote asset monitoring and SCADA infrastructure , saving them the expense of building telecom and IT infrastructure required to monitor or control wells , it soon captured almost the entire Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin ( WCSB ) market . Today Zedi ’ s customer base is global and its credentials wellestablished among oil and gas producers , particularly the more entrepreneurial SMEs in that space .
Today , even the larger multinationals are finally moving towards SaaS to manage their assets , says James Freeman , who has been with Zedi for the last 10 years . As CTO and President , New Ventures , and as an engineer , he believes that disruptive innovation , in the sense intended when the term was coined by Dr . Clayton Christensen , is really about changing the business model rather than technology per se .
The potential of the IIoT has given Zedi a huge opportunity , he says , to leverage its expertise and domain knowledge to support its business outcomes .
“ A great example of such an opportunity is exactly the managed service that Zedi has provided to O & G companies . You need data and insights to run your business but it does not follow that you therefore need to do the collection of that data , or even a base level of
102 August 2017