Oracle powers BPCL Petrocard

BANGALORE, INDIA: Oil PSU Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd (BPCL) is currently living on Oracle's Online Database Application (DBA) service for its customer loyalty program, PetroCard.

According to an official statement, the PetroCard smart card application runs on Oracle Database, Oracle Application Server and Oracle Real Application Clusters. The online service monitors BPCL’s database and application infrastructure to ensure smooth running of the loyalty program.

BPCL had picked Oracle on the basis of its technology and service that could handle high transaction loads without any disruption in customer satisfaction, said a release. Oracle’s online DBA service provides round-the-clock maintenance and infrastructure support. The PetroCard customer loyalty program represents 25 per cent of the BPCL’s total sales spread across 2.2 million customers in India and has 1,60,000 transactions per day.

Oracle online DBA service, available through Advanced Customer Services (ACS), provides optimized system performance, and availability for BPCL, by monitoring the Oracle environment and reducing the cost of the DBA, it has been pointed out. The service identifies and responds to issues that may impact the availability and performance by reducing maintenance downtime. It offers highly skilled and professional 24x7 expert services at a cost well below in-house staffing costs, the official statement said.

With the implementation of Oracle online DBA service, BPCL currently saves close to Rs 2 million annually in costs associated with database monitoring. The online service has also proved helpful for BPCL in reduce staffing costs and doing away with the task of implementing shifts and special compensation plans.