Executive Summary

Energy

The world’s population is expected to reach 9.7 billion by 2050, driving higher global energy demand and accelerating the transformation of the energy sector into a more diverse, digital and technologically advanced system. As countries modernize their infrastructure, both power and utilities and oil and gas operators must balance rising consumption with emissions-reduction requirements, evolving regulations, supply chain constraints and geopolitical pressures. To remain reliable and competitive, enterprises must upgrade aging infrastructure, improve operational efficiency, strengthen supply chain resilience and adopt advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), automation, digital twins and smart infrastructure. With electrification increasing and renewable energy expanding, the industry faces both significant challenges and opportunities as it adapts to a rapidly changing landscape.

The global energy industry faces significant challenges and opportunities as it adapts to a rapidly changing landscape.

The energy industry depends on complex, capital-intensive infrastructure across oil and gas production, transportation and refining as well as power generation, transmission and distribution. These operations require coordinated maintenance, field service, customer engagement, grid oversight and continuous monitoring to ensure safety, reliability and productivity. Modern software platforms improve visibility, streamline workflows and strengthen performance. Digital twins provide insight into critical assets, predictive maintenance helps anticipate failures and optimize maintenance planning, and enterprise asset management (EAM) and asset performance management (APM) systems guide asset lifecycles and supply chain activity to reduce operational risk. Field service platforms improve scheduling, dispatch and remote support, and grid and customer engagement systems enhance service quality and communication. Together, these technologies help energy organizations operate more safely, efficiently and sustainably.

ISG Research defines key software domains in the energy industry as an integrated ecosystem that supports reliable and efficient operations across power and utilities networks and oil and gas value chains. Digital twins create virtual models of wells, pipelines, platforms, power plants, substations and grid assets to improve performance through monitoring, analytics and simulation. Enterprise asset management and asset performance management systems coordinate maintenance, labor, controls, supply chain and asset health. Field service management supports work execution in remote or hazardous environments through scheduling, mobility, communication and technician enablement. Predictive maintenance uses condition monitoring, analytics and machine learning (ML) to anticipate failures, extend asset life and improve planning. Together, these capabilities help organizations manage operational complexity and improve performance across upstream, midstream and downstream operations as well as generation, transmission and distribution.

Energy systems span vast and continuously operating infrastructure, including power plants, substations, transmission lines, distribution grids, wells, pipelines, compressor stations, offshore platforms, refineries and storage facilities. These assets run under demanding conditions and require continuous monitoring, maintenance and operational support to ensure the steady production, transportation and delivery of energy. As environmental and regulatory expectations rise, maintaining a stable and dependable energy supply.

Aging infrastructure, harsher environments, rising customer expectations, tighter regulations and a shrinking skilled workforce have driven the industry from manual processes and reactive maintenance toward digitally connected operations that anticipate problems before they arise. Traditional asset management and field service activities relied on manual inspections and siloed systems, limiting real-time insight and slowing response times. As operational demands increased, providers adopted advanced digital tools, evolving from basic supervisory systems to integrated platforms that use AI, IoT data, cloud technologies, mobile applications, augmented reality and digital twins. These technologies have transformed essential functions into intelligent, proactive and automated capabilities and continue to advance predictive, data-driven operations that improve reliability, reduce cost and strengthen safety and compliance.

Aging infrastructure, harsher environments, rising customer expectations, tighter regulations and a shrinking skilled workforce have driven the industry toward digitally connected operations.

Enterprises evaluating next-generation software such as customer engagement, grid management, digital twins, asset management, field service and predictive maintenance need platforms that reduce manual effort, streamline workflows and deliver measurable efficiency gains. They require systems that provide visibility into asset and equipment health, minimize downtime through stronger scheduling, resource allocation and maintenance planning, and support sustainability by optimizing energy use, tracking emissions and reducing unnecessary maintenance, fuel consumption and truck rolls. Above all, organizations should select providers that enhance safety and long-term performance while enabling a more data-driven, efficient and future-ready operation across both oil and gas and power and utilities sectors.

Energy enterprises should adopt platforms that unify asset lifecycle and performance management, field operations, grid oversight, customer engagement, digital twins and predictive maintenance in a consistent and integrated environment. These platforms must streamline communication and operational workflows, reduce manual effort and provide visibility into customers, assets and equipment health. Leading systems deliver predictive insights powered by AI, IoT data, cloud technologies and advanced analytics to improve reliability, reduce downtime and optimize resources. They should also support sustainability and compliance objectives by optimizing energy use, tracking emissions and reducing unnecessary field activity. Selecting providers with these capabilities enables organizations to strengthen safety, improve long-term performance and build a more data-driven, future-ready energy operation.

The 2025 ISG Buyers Guide™ for Energy evaluates six software providers across the key areas defined in the Oil and Gas and Power and Utilities research. Provider inclusion for Oil and Gas required enterprise asset management or asset performance management, field service and predictive maintenance capabilities as well as specific industry support. Provider inclusion for Power and Utilities required enterprise asset management or asset performance management, customer engagement, field service and predictive maintenance capabilities along with industry-specific functionality. Both industries evaluated platform support for analytics, data, devices, integration and knowledge management, AI support and investment. This research evaluates the following providers: GE Vernova, IBM, IFS, Oracle, PTC and SAP.

Buyers Guide Overview

ISG Research has conducted market research for over two decades across vertical industries, business applications, AI and IT. We have designed the ISG Buyers Guide™ to provide a balanced perspective of software providers and products that is rooted in an understanding of business and IT requirements. Utilization of our research methodology and decades of experience enable our Buyers Guide to be an effective method to assess and select software providers and products. The findings of this research provide a comprehensive approach to rating software providers and rank their ability to meet specific product and customer experience requirements.

ISG Research has designed the Buyers Guide to provide a balanced perspective of software providers and products that is rooted in an understanding of business and IT requirements.

The structure of the research reflects our understanding that the effective evaluation of software providers and products involves far more than just examining product features, potential revenue or customers generated from a provider’s marketing and sales efforts. It can ensure the best long-term relationship and value achieved from a resource and financial investment. We believe it is important to take a comprehensive, research-based approach, since making the wrong choice of energy software can raise the total cost of ownership, lower the return on investment and hamper an enterprise’s ability to reach its potential. In addition, this approach can reduce the project’s development and deployment time and eliminate the risk of relying on opinions or historical biases.

ISG Research believes that an objective review of existing and potential new software providers and products is a critical strategy for the adoption and implementation of energy software. An enterprise’s review should include an analysis of both what is possible and what is relevant. We urge enterprises to do a thorough job of evaluating energy software and offer this Buyers Guide as both the results of our in-depth analysis of these providers and as an evaluation methodology.

Key Takeaways

Energy enterprises are navigating rising operational complexity as aging infrastructure, environmental expectations, regulatory pressures and shifting customer demands reshape how power and utilities and oil and gas organizations operate. Modern platforms that integrate asset management, field operations, grid oversight, customer engagement, digital twins and predictive maintenance are replacing manual and siloed processes across expansive and continuously operating systems. As operations span harsh environments and distributed infrastructure, organizations increasingly rely on data-driven tools that improve visibility, strengthen reliability and reduce manual effort. These shifts are driving the adoption of technologies that enable safer, more efficient and future-ready energy operations.

Software Provider Summary
The ISG Buyers Guide™ for Energy evaluates six software providers offering capabilities across asset management, field service, predictive maintenance, digital twins, grid operations and customer engagement for both oil and gas and power and utilities sectors. The research ranked the top three overall leaders as IFS, Oracle and GE Vernova. Providers were classified using weighted performance in Product Experience and Customer Experience for ISG quadrant placement. GE Vernova, IFS and Oracle were rated as Exemplary, with IBM, PTC and SAP rated as Merit.

Product Experience Insights
Product Experience, representing 80% of the evaluation, focuses on Capability (30%) and Platform (50%), which includes adaptability, manageability, reliability and usability. IFS, Oracle and GE Vernova achieved the highest performance as Leaders in this category, supported by their functional breadth across energy use cases and strong platform foundations capable of scaling across complex and distributed environments. Leaders demonstrated enterprise-grade platform capabilities across varied roles and contexts.

Customer Experience Value
Customer Experience, representing 20% of the evaluation, focuses on validation and TCO/ROI. GE Vernova, Oracle and IFS were the Leaders in this category, showing strong customer advocacy and clear investment in success outcomes. Providers with lower performance often lacked publicly available customer validation or failed to demonstrate structured ROI measurement and proactive lifecycle engagement.

Strategic Recommendations
Enterprises should prioritize platforms that unify asset management, field operations, customer engagement and grid oversight while reducing manual effort and strengthening reliability. Buyers should select providers that integrate AI, IoT data and scalable platform capabilities to support predictive insights and improve safety and operational efficiency. Systems that optimize energy use, track emissions and reduce unnecessary field activity will advance sustainability and compliance goals. Aligning provider capabilities with asset complexity, infrastructure scale and regulatory needs will support more resilient, data-driven energy operations.

How To Use This Buyers Guide

Evaluating Software Providers: The Process

We recommend using the Buyers Guide to assess and evaluate new or existing software providers for your enterprise. The market research can be used as an evaluation framework to assess existing approaches and software providers or establish a formal request for information from providers on products and customer experience and will shorten the cycle time when creating an RFI. The steps listed below provide a process that can facilitate best possible outcomes in the most efficient manner.

1. Define the business case and goals.
   Define the mission and business case for investment and the expected outcomes from your organizational and technological efforts.

2. Specify the business and IT needs.
   Defining the business and IT requirements helps identify what specific capabilities are required with respect to people, processes, information and technology.

3. Assess the required roles and responsibilities.
   Identify the individuals required for success at every level of the enterprise from executives to frontline workers and determine the needs of each.

4. Outline the project’s critical path.
   What needs to be done, in what order and who will do it? This outline should make clear the prior dependencies at each step of the project plan.

5. Ascertain the technology approach.
   Determine the business and technology approach that most closely aligns to your enterprise’s requirements.

6. Establish software provider evaluation criteria.
   Utilize the product experience: capability and platform with support for adaptability, manageability, reliability and usability, and the customer experience in TCO/ROI and Validation.

7. Evaluate and select the software provider and products properly.
   Apply a weighting the evaluation categories in the evaluation criteria to reflect your enterprise’s priorities to determine the short list of software providers and products.

8. Establish the business initiative team to start the project.
   Identify who will lead the project and the members of the team needed to plan and execute it with timelines, priorities and resources.

Using the ISG Buyers Guide and process provides enterprises a clear, structured approach to making smarter software and business investment decisions. It ensures alignment between strategy, people, processes and technology while reducing risk, saving time, and improving outcomes. The ISG approach promotes data-driven decision-making and collaboration, helping choose the right software providers for maximum value and return on investment.

The Findings

The software providers and products evaluated in the research provide product and customer experiences, but not everything offered is equally valuable to every enterprise or is needed to operate in business processes and use cases. Moreover, the existence of too many capabilities in products may be a negative factor for an enterprise if it introduces unnecessary complexity. Nonetheless, you may decide that a more comprehensive set of capabilities in the product is important, and where they match your enterprise’s requirements.

An effective customer relationship with a software provider is vital to the success of any investment. The overall customer experience and the full lifecycle of engagement play a key role in ensuring satisfaction and long-term success. Providers with dedicated customer leadership, such as chief customer officers, tend to invest more deeply in these relationships and prioritize customer outcomes to TCO and ROI expectations. It is equally important that this commitment to customer success is clearly demonstrated throughout the provider’s website, buying process and customer journey.

Overall Scoring of Software Providers Across Categories

The research finds IFS atop the list, followed by Oracle and GE Vernova. Providers that place in the top three of a category earn the designation of Leader. IFS and Oracle have done so in five categories; GE Vernova in four; and SAP in one.

The overall representation of the research below places the rating of the Product Experience and Customer Experience on the x and y axes, respectively, to provide a visual representation and classification of the software providers. Those providers whose Product Experience have above-median weighted performance to the axis in aggregate of the two product categories place farther to the right, while the performance and weighting for the Customer Experience category determines placement on the vertical axis. In short, software providers that place closer to the upper-right on this chart performed better than those closer to the lower-left.

The research categorizes and rates software providers into one of four categories: Assurance, Exemplary, Merit or Innovative. This representation of software providers’ weighted performance in meeting the requirements in product and customer experience.

Exemplary: This rating (upper right) represents those that performed above median in Product and Customer Experience requirements. The providers rated Exemplary are: GE Vernova, IFS and Oracle.

Innovative: This rating (lower right) represents those that performed above median in Product Experience but not in Customer Experience. No providers are rated Innovative.

Assurance: This rating (upper left) represents those that performed above median in Customer Experience but not in Product Experience. No providers are rated Assurance.

Merit: This rating (lower left) represents those that did not surpass the median in Customer or Product Experience. The providers rated Merit are: IBM, PTC and SAP.

We advise enterprises to use this research as a supplement to their own evaluations, recognizing that ratings or rankings do not solely represent the value of a provider nor indicate universal suitability of a set of products.

Product Experience

The process of researching products to address an enterprise’s needs should be comprehensive and evaluate specific capabilities and the underlying platform to the product experience. Our evaluation of the Product Experience examines the lifecycle of onboarding, configuration, operations, usage and maintenance. Too often, software providers are not evaluated for the entirety of the product; instead, they are evaluated on market execution and vision of the future.

The research results in Product Experience are ranked at 80%, or four-fifths, using the underlying weighted performance. Importance was placed on the categories as follows: Capability (30%) and Platform (50%). IFS, Oracle and GE Vernova were designated Product Experience Leaders. While not a Leader, SAP was also found to meet a broad range of enterprise product experience requirements.

Customer Experience

The importance of a customer relationship with a software provider is essential to the actual success of the products and technology. The evaluation of the Customer Experience and the entire lifecycle an enterprise has with its software provider is critical for ensuring satisfaction in working with that provider. The ISG Buyers Guide examines a software provider’s customer commitment, viability, customer success, sales and onboarding, product roadmap and services with partners and support. The customer experience category also investigates the TCO/ROI and how well a software provider demonstrates the product’s overall value, cost and benefits, including the tools and resources to evaluate these factors.

The research results in Customer Experience are ranked at 20%, or one-fifth of the 100% index, and represent the underlying provider validation and TCO/ROI requirements as they relate to the framework of commitment and value to the software provider-customer relationship.

The software providers that evaluated the highest in the Customer Experience category are GE Vernova, Oracle and IFS. These category Leaders best communicate commitment and dedication to customer needs.

Software providers that did not perform well in this category were unable to provide or make sufficient information readily available to demonstrate success or articulate their commitment to customer experience. The use of a software provider requires continuous investment, so a holistic evaluation must include examination of how they support their customer experience.

Appendix: Software Provider Inclusion

For inclusion in the ISG Buyers Guide™ for overall Energy in 2025, a software provider must be in good standing financially and ethically, have at least $25 million in annual or projected revenue verified using independent sources, sell products and provide support on at least two continents, and have at least 25 customers. The principal source of the relevant business unit’s revenue must be software-related, and there must have been at least one major software release in the past 12 months.

All software providers that offer relevant products and meet the inclusion requirements are invited to participate in the Buyers Guide evaluation process, at no cost to them. If a provider does not respond to or decline the invitation, a determination is made whether to include it in our analysis based on our defined set of inclusion criteria. These criteria are designed to ensure we include in our evaluation providers’ geographic operations, customer base and revenue as well as all relevant aspects of the products’ fit for the particular category being evaluated.

If a provider is actively marketing, selling and developing a product as reflected on its website that is within the scope of the Buyers Guide, it is automatically evaluated for inclusion. We have adopted this approach because we view it as our responsibility to assess all relevant providers whether or not they choose to actively participate. Software providers with defined functionality are evaluated on the ability to offer a combination (if not all) of the following capabilities:

Oil and Gas

• • Enterprise asset management or asset performance management 

  • Field service

  • Predictive maintenance

Power and Utilities

• • Customer engagement

  • Enterprise asset management or asset performance management 

  • Field service

  • Predictive maintenance

The research is designed to be independent of the specifics of software provider packaging and pricing. To represent the real-world environment in which businesses operate, we include providers that offer application suites or packages of products that may include relevant individual modules or applications.

Products Evaluated

Providers of Promise

We did not include software providers that, as a result of our research and analysis, did not satisfy the criteria for inclusion in this Buyers Guide. These are listed below as “Providers of Promise.”