BUCHAREST, Romania, January 26, 2006 - Cisco Systems today announced that Petrom, the largest oil and gas producer of South Eastern Europe, has selected the Cisco Internet Protocol (IP) Communications solution as its IP telephony system to help optimize its business processes, improve operational efficiency and reduce communications costs. Petrom is working with Cisco and Cisco certified partner S&T Romania in the initial roll out of the IP telephony system to 3,600 users across eight locations, including two oil refinery sites at Ploiesti and Pitesti, and expects to extend it to approximately 10,000 to 15,000 users over the next three to five years.
The Cisco IP telephony deployment is part of an extensive modernization process that Petrom has embarked on since the company was privatized in 2004. This modernization process is being supported by the development of a high-performance IT infrastructure based on IP and standardized elements that is capable of supporting converged data and voice applications for all Petrom operations.
Christian Ogris, Chief Information Officer, Petrom, said: "Our IT infrastructure is highly important for our modernization process and we needed to update our existing telephony systems, not only to save costs but also to deliver the flexibility and manageability that we need to improve our activities. Cisco demonstrated their understanding of our needs with a solution that integrated well with our network and was fine-tuned to adapt to the evolution of our business."
Petrom's Cisco IP telephony system is designed for centralized configuration and administration, with deployments across the sites being remotely supervised. This has resulted in significant savings in cost, time and resources during the deployment and during initial set-up and administration of moves, adds and changes. Since the first phase of the Cisco IP Communications system deployment was completed, Petrom has eliminated the cost of inter-site calls between the eight locations as call traffic is now carried over the IP network. The Cisco solution also helps to avoid duplication of resources during the modernization process as the Cisco IP phones can be easily redeployed anywhere in the network.
"The successful rollout of the Cisco IP Communications project at Petrom is a sign of our long-term commitment to supporting businesses in Romania," said Bogdan Constantinescu, Country Manager, Cisco Systems Romania & Republic of Moldova. "We can bring the expertise we have gained from working with thousands of enterprises worldwide to solve complex business communications issues and help customers improve business process efficiency."
Petrom has initially installed two Cisco CallManager systems to support all call processing functions over the eight locations and deployed 1,300 Cisco 7940G and 7960G IP phones. It has also started a new phase of deployment for 2,300 new Cisco IP phones on a Cisco network infrastructure consisting of Cisco Catalyst 3560 and Catalyst 4506 Series switches, Cisco 2800 Series and 3800 Series Integrated Services routers and Cisco PIX 515 and 525 Series security appliances.
About Petrom
Petrom is the largest Romanian oil and gas group, with activities in the business segments of Exploration and Production, Refining and Petrochemicals, as well as Sales and Marketing. Petrom has estimated oil and gas reserves of 1 billion boe, refining capacity of 8 million metric tons and around 600 filling stations. In 2004 the sales revenue of Petrom was EUR 2,143 million, EBITDA was EUR 28 million. Since December 2004 OMV, the leading oil and gas group in Central Europe holds a 51% share in Petrom. OMV is active in Refining and Marketing, Exploration and Production, Gas as well as Chemicals in 28 countries on five continents. The Romanian state holds 40.74% of Petrom shares, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, 2.03%, and 6.23% are owned by minority shareholders.
