Mail.Ru Group to partner Gazprom Neft in developing a global business managment digital platform

24 may 2018, press release

Gazprom Neft has concluded a Cooperation Agreement with Mail.Ru Group on collaborating in the development and implementation of digital technologies and Industry 4.0 solutions at this year’s St Petersburg International Economic Forum, during a signing ceremony attended by Gazprom Neft CEO Alexander Dyukov and Mail.Ru Group CEO Boris Dobrodeev.

On the photo (from left to right): Gazprom Neft CEO Alexander Dyukov and Mail.Ru Group CEO Boris Dobrodeev

The key focus in joint activities between Gazprom Neft and Mail.Ru Group specialists will be on developing, testing and implementing real-time BigData and FastData storage and processing solutions to optimise and improve efficiency in the processing, logistics and marketing of oil products. The outcome of which will be the creation of a universal system (based on Russian software) allowing integrated management and oversight over the production, delivery and sale of products from the company’s production assets to anywhere in the world, in real time. The system will be integrated into Gazprom Neft’s global IT platform, which the company is working on creating as part of the digital transformation of its business. In addition, the partners will work together on developing a Russian industrial “databus” for the collection, unification and analysis of information, in real time.

A specialist working group is to be set up to promote knowledge and experience sharing, joint research activities and the development of innovative solutions for the oil and gas industry, including developers from Mail.Ru Group and specialists from Gazprom Neft’s Digital Innovations Centre (DIC) and TechnoPark. It is expected that this joint work will result in creating prototypes of fundamentally new marketing processes responsive to market dynamics in real time — facilitating, among other things, costs reductions and risk mitigation in payment transactions.

The partners plan to manage testing of these technologies through the technological capacities of the company’s bitumens and aviation refuelling businesses — Gazpromneft Bitumen Materials and Gazpromneft-Aero, with the first project involving the implementation of IT solutions in managing supplies of bitumen materials to any point at a given time, improving efficiencies in road transportation logistics. An instant settlements system for “wing-tip” aviation refuelling operations, based on blockchain technology, will also be developed. These new solutions will be replicated, in due course, throughout other Gazprom Neft assets and integrated into the architecture of the company’s inclusive digital platform.

Commenting on the agreement with Mail.Ru Group, Alexander Dyukov, CEO and Chairman of the Management Board, Gazprom Neft, said: “The importance of digital assets in business is growing every day, and the use of information technology is becoming a critical condition for companies’ market competitiveness. This project, to create a single digital platform for Gazprom Neft, is directed at the global transformation of the business. We are involving Russia’s best technology partners in addressing this challenge — companies able to provide in-depth expertise and scalable solutions for creating tools and models for new, digital production solutions able to radically improve company’s business efficiency.”

Mail.Ru Group CEO Boris Dobrodeev added: “Digital business solutions are an important area for our company. The Gazprom Neft project is particularly important, insofar as we see great potential in developing market services in optimising logistics solutions based on our own B2B services, including the Tarantool system. I hope this project will bring obvious benefits to our clients.”

Gazprom Neft is a vertically integrated oil company, primarily involved in oil and gas exploration and production, refining, and the production and sale of oil products. The Gazprom Neft’s corporate structure comprises more than 70 production, refining and sales subsidiaries throughout Russia, the CIS, and abroad.

The company’s proved and probable reserves (SPE-PRMS) are estimated at 2.78 billion tonnes of oil equivalent (btoe), making Gazprom Neft one of the top-20 largest oil and gas companies in the world, and one of Russia’s top three largest companies in terms of production and refining volumes. Total production in 2017 reached 89.75 million tonnes of oil equivalent (mtoe), with refining volumes of 40.1 million tonnes.

Gazprom Neft products are exported to more than 50 countries worldwide, and sold throughout the Russian Federation and abroad. The company’s filling station network totals more than 1,850 outlets throughout Russia, the CIS and Europe.

Mail.Ru Group, part of international brand My.com (MAIL.IL, listed on 5 November 2010, and founded in 1998) is the largest holding in Russia by daily audience (Mediascope Web Index, based on 12-64 year-olds in cities of over 100,000 population, February 2018).

Mail.Ru Group is actively developing B2B tools and services allowing businesses to simplify workflows and improve their efficiency.

Tarantool is a proprietary in-memory database management platform belonging to the Mail.Ru Group, designed for the development of Industry 4.0 digital solutions. The Tarantool platform allows data to be collected from millions of sensors located throughout industrial, transport, and agricultural sites and facilities, allowing it to be transmitted to data centres for online analysis. It is used in the financial sector, telecoms and other high-technology industries. The Vision machine-vision system is the Mail.Ru Group’s technology for recognising faces and objects through machine learning. The company’s Predictive Analytics tool is a CRM optimisation tool utilising deep customer segmentation on the basis of various criteria and recommendations. Email for Business and Mail.Ru Cloud Solutions are cloud-based infrastructure solutions for businesses. myTracker manages incoming detailed statistics and comprehensive data for mobile product audiences. SEOscan analyses company sites in terms of hits, audiences, and search engine optimisation (SEO), and Mediator and myWidget analyse media usage and consumption across various audiences. The company also offers other B2B services.

Tags: digitalization, technology