OMV and Microsoft agreed on a strategic partnership, which were discussed by OMV CFO Reinhard Florey and OMV CIO Jan Leitermann together with the president of Microsoft Western Europe, Vahe Torossian, who was accompanied by Jean-Philippe Courtois, executive vice president and president global sales, marketing and operations of Microsoft Corp., on December 2, in Paris.

OMV will implement Microsoft cloud technologies such as the hybrid cloud platform Azure, which will allow scalability and ubiquity in both data storage and processing. In the next three years, OMV expects a significant part of its processing capacity to be located on intelligent cloud platforms, and will also adopt Office 365 as the communication, collaboration and productivity solution for its employees. With this agreement in place, OMV will be able to accelerate the building of skills required for the digital age.

“OMV’s Digital Journey is part of our OMV 2025 strategy, whose goal is to enable growth, drive performance and reward our shareholders. Our comprehensive digital roadmap involves use cases across the entire group, i.e. corporate, upstream and downstream, and will deploy advanced, group-wide digital platforms and technologies. The global partnership with Microsoft positions us at the forefront of digital technology development and will significantly support us in achieving our targeted results,” Florey said.

The alliance includes the companies’ joint work in identifying innovative solutions for the energy industry based on cloud-computing technologies, artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things (IoT), big data and mixed reality, among others. By implementing a Cloud Center of Excellence (CCoE), OMV will accelerate innovation and migration efforts while reducing the overall costs of change. This will be accompanied by the implementation of LinkedIn Learning, which will enable OMV to develop talent and keep skills current with a personalized eLearning approach.

Microsoft will provide OMV with access to a specialized multidisciplinary team with a high level of knowledge of the energy sector, as well as the experience of its R&D unit, Microsoft Research, to work on innovative projects. Microsoft will also provide information to OMV’s technical departments on future developments and technologies in a beta phase for testing and evaluation purposes. The agreement additionally includes the creation of a digital projects coordination team that will manage the alliance between OMV and Microsoft. The team will promote joint initiatives and identify specific business scenarios.

The application of these technologies, at the forefront of digitalization, will allow it to successfully address future needs. This team will also recommend proofs of concept and prototypes to evaluate the practical feasibility of innovative models in the areas of customer experience, talent management, operations and digital delivery of products and services.