Advances in horizontal drilling and completion techniques have proliferated onshore development of unconventional shale fields. These wells can span hundreds of miles across a field for a single operator. Live remote monitoring and automation of operations is ideal but rarely cost-effective. Upstream oil and gas operations face many challenges measuring and sending data from remote well sites. Sensors must operate in remote areas, challenging terrain, and inhospitable environments, making very difficult to implement a wireless data flow collection and transmission. Additionally, data integration and consolidation between many devices, software packages, file sizes, and file types, compounds the challenges for analyzing the data for potential improvements in operational efficiencies. Autonomous remote measurement, transmission, and control of oilfield sensors continuously pursued, but rarely fully implemented. The fast production decline of unconventional shales makes high-cost telemetry systems perceived as not economic to install within a few years after the initial production of a well. However, Oil and Gas industry sensors are improving in reliability and become more robust to work in harsh environments. The transmission networks have increased their capabilities and coverage, representing the evolution of every component that conforms the onshore oilfield data architecture, becoming their implementation easier than the recent past. This paper describes the real-time data-flow architecture for oil and gas well operations, and what are the main challenges of implementing the digital oilfield concept by studying the actual use of devices in the field and the conditions in which they operate for understanding the digital oilfield implementation challenges. Also, there are presented some examples of how the industry is benefiting from real-time data-flow architecture and a brief introduction of how it can be connected with big data implementation for enhancing oilfield operations.