Led by Natalia Borisenko, Head of the Information Analysis Systems Directorate of the Finance and Economics Department, a Gazprom delegation paid a working visit to Germany and France as part of the Company’s Informatization Strategy execution.

The delegation held a number of meetings with top managers of SAP AG and SAP Competence Centers of SUN Microsystems and IBM. During the meetings the parties exchanged opinions on the crucial issues with regard to introducing information technologies (IT), namely designing the appropriate hardware configuration for SAP Business Suite solutions, building data processing centers and providing support for maintenance and expansion of SAP applications and products.

Gazprom’s delegation also met with Gerhard Oswald, Member of SAP AG Executive Board. The parties discussed the cooperation deepening prospects and the issues of interaction within the Gazprom Informatization Strategy. Gerhard Oswald underlined that SAP AG leadership was highly interested in meeting the challenges faced by Gazprom as a global energy company relevant to introducing state-of-the IT solutions. The agreements were reached to arrange in Moscow a meeting between Andrey Kruglov, Deputy Chairman of the Management Committee – Head of the Finance and Economics Department of Gazprom and Leo Apotheker, Chief Executive Officer of SAP AG.

Working meetings were also held with top managers of BASF IT Services GmbH and Patrick Hereng, Chief Information Officer of Total. The participants exchanged experience in creating IT enterprise architecture, arranging IT control and interaction between IT services and business subdivisions. The parties were unanimous about the expediency of furthering the interaction in the crucial areas of IT introduction in large international energy companies.

Background:

The Informatization Strategy was adopted by the Gazprom Management Committee’s resolution on January 17, 2008. The Strategy defines key development directions for the Company’s IT solutions ensuring the achievement of its strategic goals.

The target enterprise architecture outlined in the Gazprom Informatization Strategy relies on the maximum systems standardization in order to meet benchmark tasks, as well as unitization of the software applied. At the same time, Gazprom Group has identified SAP AG software platform as the foundation of its target resource management system.

The Strategy is implemented in compliance with annually approved plans. The Gazprom Informatization Strategy Plan for 2009 was approved by Alexey Miller, Chairman of the Company’s Management Committee on April 6, 2009. The Plan stipulates performance of works in the following key areas:

- shaping vertically-integrated benchmark information and management systems (IMS) based on the Corporate Data Bank to support the corporate management processes in the gas business;

- creating benchmark IMS for subsidiary gas companies with due regard to Gazprom’s business activities;

- introducing system-wide solutions ensuring information and technological integration of functional modules within the target enterprise architecture (Corporate Data Bank, Iternal Corporate E-Portal).

Implementation of the information projects portfolio stipulated by the Plan will help to create an integrated information space securing unitization of data and transparency of the corporate reporting documents from the primary sources to the key risk and efficiency indicators.

The Information Analysis Systems Directorate of the Company’s Finance and Economics Department was entrusted with assuring the information and technological integration of the IMS being created within the Informatization Strategy.

In the aim of creating a unified responsibility center to implement the main Strategy’s initiatives on the operational level, the Gazprom Board of Directors adopted the decision to set up Gazprom inform, a subsidiary IT servicing company, through the restructuring of Informgazinvest and Informgaz subsidiaries.