Cisco IP Communications System Brings Business Efficiencies to Petrom; Cisco and S&T Romania Implement IP Telephony at Eight Sites for Largest Oil & Gas Producer in South Eastern Europe

Cisco Systems (NASDAQ:CSCO) today announced that Petrom,the largest oil and gas producer of South Eastern Europe, has selectedthe Cisco Internet Protocol (IP) Communications solution as its IPtelephony system to help optimize its business processes, improveoperational efficiency and reduce communications costs. Petrom isworking with Cisco and Cisco certified partner S&T Romania in theinitial rollout of the IP telephony system to 3,600 users across eightlocations, including two oil refinery sites at Ploiesti and Pitesti,and expects to extend it to approximately 10,000 to 15,000 users overthe next three to five years.

The Cisco IP telephony deployment is part of an extensivemodernization process that Petrom has embarked on since the companywas privatized in 2004. This modernization process is being supportedby the development of a high-performance IT infrastructure based on IPand standardized elements that is capable of supporting converged dataand voice applications for all Petrom operations.

Christian Ogris, Chief Information Officer, Petrom, said: "Our ITinfrastructure is highly important for our modernization process andwe needed to update our existing telephony systems, not only to savecosts but also to deliver the flexibility and manageability that weneed to improve our activities. Cisco demonstrated their understandingof our needs with a solution that integrated well with our network andwas fine-tuned to adapt to the evolution of our business."

Petrom's Cisco IP telephony system is designed for centralizedconfiguration and administration, with deployments across the sitesbeing remotely supervised. This has resulted in significant savings incost, time and resources during the deployment and during initialset-up and administration of moves, adds and changes. Since the firstphase of the Cisco IP Communications system deployment was completed,Petrom has eliminated the cost of inter-site calls between the eightlocations as call traffic is now carried over the IP network. TheCisco solution also helps to avoid duplication of resources during themodernization process as the Cisco IP phones can be easily redeployedanywhere in the network.

"The successful rollout of the Cisco IP Communications project atPetrom is a sign of our long-term commitment to supporting businessesin Romania," said Bogdan Constantinescu, Country Manager, CiscoSystems Romania & Republic of Moldova. "We can bring the expertise wehave gained from working with thousands of enterprises worldwide tosolve complex business communications issues and help customersimprove business process efficiency."

Petrom has initially installed two Cisco CallManager systems tosupport all call processing functions over the eight locations anddeployed 1,300 Cisco 7940G and 7960G IP phones. It has also started anew phase of deployment for 2,300 new Cisco IP phones on a Cisconetwork infrastructure consisting of Cisco Catalyst 3560 and Catalyst4506 Series switches, Cisco 2800 Series and 3800 Series IntegratedServices routers and Cisco PIX 515 and 525 Series security appliances.

About Petrom

Petrom is the largest Romanian oil and gas group, with activitiesin the business segments of Exploration and Production, Refining andPetrochemicals, as well as Sales and Marketing. Petrom has estimatedoil and gas reserves of 1 billion boe, refining capacity of 8 millionmetric tons and around 600 filling stations. In 2004 the sales revenueof Petrom was EUR 2,143 million, EBITDA was EUR 28 million. SinceDecember 2004 OMV, the leading oil and gas group in Central Europeholds a 51% share in Petrom. OMV is active in Refining and Marketing,Exploration and Production, and Gas as well as Chemicals in 28countries on five continents. The Romanian state holds 40.74% ofPetrom shares, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development,2.03%, and 6.23% are owned by minority shareholders.

About Cisco Systems

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