As the world’s industries sort through the wide swath of damage left by the financial crisis, top corporate strategists have been left to wonder how they will fund growth without the availability of credit. The oil and gas industry has been able to weather the crisis more adeptly due to record high oil prices over the previous year. As a result, the crisis has created opportunity and heartache for a variety of independent oil and gas companies, creating an atmosphere of consolidation, conservatism, and divesture.

According to an article in the Petroleum Economist, M&A activity within the oil & gas sector over the first three quarters of 2008 amounted to 220 transactions worth $78 billion, or $345.5 million per deal. In 2007, M&A activity in the sector amounted to $152 billion, or $460.61 million per a deal. While 2008 will come to an end without the M&A sector activity surpassing the 2007 level, the fact that the 2008 figure is so high is miraculous considering the credit markets have all but dried up for the last quarter. The financial crisis has created two groups, those with healthy balance sheets are being presented with opportunities to buy proven assets at bargain basement prices while some up and coming companies have been forced to sell promising holdings just to stay afloat. More...

Scenario: An oil and gas company has been developing the R&D for years to get into alternative energy. Now the time is right. The technology is proven. It’s time to start generating a revenue stream. But wait – is the back office technology ready?

Many energy companies are in exactly this situation. The good news is: the back office technology to support the business of alternative energy production is ready. In fact, the software available to handle the new business units in hydro, wind and solar energy is worth looking at for the oil and gas side of the business, too, because each unit of a complex energy company still needs to be tied together, whether it’s based on traditional or emerging sources. More...

Pegasus Imaging Corp. announced the release of a substantial upgrade to Prizm^® Viewer, the browser-based image viewer that allows users to navigate, view, annotate and share images, CAD and PDF files residing in document management or enterprise content management systems over the Web. The viewer works with numerous image formats and includes powerful administrative tools for user interface customization, deployment and annotation storage.

Prizm Viewer provides a flexible, yet controlled, platform delivering documents that have been stored in Oracle^®, FileNet^®, Documentum^® and other systems. By creating Web pages containing simple instructions, organizations can present multiple files to users as one "virtual document," control almost every aspect of the user viewing experience, and enable collaboration through centralized, real-time annotations. More...