HOUSTON-Only 12 percent of Fortune 500 companies from 1955 are still in existence. How and why has that happened? Technology continues to disrupt legacy behemoths. Data and the story they tell are vital to the current and longterm success of any product, service or company. By 2020, it is predicted that there will be 50 zettabytes of stored data. That is the equivalent of 50 billion 1.0-terabyte disk drives. By 2030, that number is expected to increase by an order of magnitude! The central promise of big data is that it provides a better way to gain insights into the real-world challenges businesses face every day. In the past, collecting and interpreting vast quantities of data were not feasible because the technologies that automate that process did not yet exist. Today, innovative big data and digital-enabled technological solutions are changing that status quo in increasingly complicated last-mile logistics in the proppant supply chain. Proppant consumption per well in the United States has doubled over the past five years and quadrupled over the past 10 years. The percentage of the cost for proppant delivered to the blender in a modern hydraulic fracturing operation can make up 20-25 percent of total well cost, up from a small fraction only a few years ago. AUGUST 2018 63