OREANDA-NEWS. March 20, 2012. Experts of IDGC of Centre together with specialists of I-Teco and Fujitsu have successfully completed the project to create a cloud service for the operation of the corporate information system of enterprise resource management (ERP) of IDGC of Centre in the data center "TrastInfo".

The concept of automated resource management system was developed in IDGC of Centre in 2006. It solved many issues to unify the management system, provided business transparency for shareholders and parent organizations, improved the efficiency of operational management of the Company. ERP covers all areas of financial and economic and industrial activities of grid companies — down to the level of Districts of Electrical Networks inclusively. The system provides information support to the business processes of financial and economic, technical and human resources areas. Today, specialists can fully maintain the system in the financial and management accounting, create accounting reports, as well as manage material flows holistically.

In order to improve performance and reliability of the information system, as well as significantly reduce the current operating costs in September 2011 the management of IDGC of Centre made a strategic decision to transfer its ERP system based on SAP ERP to a new data processing center (DPC). A key factor in the tender was the requirement to minimize the ERP shutdown for the time of the data migration and putting the system into production.

Experts of IDGC of Centre planned a two-step transfer the ERP to a new site. At the initial stage of the project a starter computer system was created that was identical to the original data center platforms. It made it possible to minimize the shutdown time of the system and ensure smooth operation of the Company’s branches. In the second phase a cloud service based on a Hi-end system of Fujitsu FlexFrame was launched. Then an unprecedented even by world standards cross-platform SAP data migration was performed: 7 out of 41 ERP systems were transferred to a fundamentally different hardware platform without stopping the process of calculation with electricity consumers.

The deliverable of the project was to reduce the response time of key ERP systems for the business of IDGC of Centre several times, lower operating costs for the operation by more than two times and a guaranteed reserve of computing power for the future development of the enterprise.

"The experience of using advanced IT solutions in IDGC of Centre in energy management is a necessary condition of the Company and its subsidiaries operation in the new economic conditions. Tanks to the ERP system it has become possible to more effectively address problems in financial accounting, materials management, maintenance and repair of equipment. Now it is possible to display messages about outages in real time — comments Adviser to General Director of IDGC of Centre Alexander Balashov. — The transfer of the ERP system to the new site — it is a new stage in the development of IT-technologies of IDGC of Centre. During 2012 the development of the system will continue".

"One of the requirements of this project was easy scaling of the new information system — comments sales director of Fujitsu Technology Solutions in Russia Vladimir Orlov. — We offered the most flexible approach, which allows continuing to expand only those subsystems, which will not have enough resources. In general, the new platform enables the gradual increase in computational power and storage capacity by more than 10 times".

"The success of this landmark project that is both interesting and unique for the entire energy sector — is the overall success of the teams of IDGC of Centre, I-Teco and Fujitsu. With an efficient, coordinated and prompt work of experts of the three companies the ERP migration was performed as quickly as possible without losing data. In addition, this project has become one of the largest in Russia to create a cloud service for the operation of a productive SAP system of this scale. We are grateful to the management of IDGC of Centre for the trust and appreciate the opportunity and the prospects for further cooperation,"- stressed Chairman of the board of directors of I-Teco Alexey Remizov.