New Delhi, Apr 12 (IANS): Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd (BPCL) and Microsoft on Tuesday announced a strategic, seven-year cloud partnership that will help the oil and gas company accelerate the modernisation of its tech architecture to enhance customer experience.

Microsoft will provide infrastructure as a service (IAAS), platform as a service (PAAS), network and security services to fuel BPCL's cloud transformation.

Both companies have been working closely to provide a secure collaboration experience for BPCL's employee ecosystem across the country, with Microsoft Teams and workplace productivity suite.

"Through our cloud-based digital transformation project, we are focused to build innovative and customer friendly solutions which are increasingly interconnected, smart, always available and provide a single window of BPCL services to customers seamlessly," said Rahul Tandon, Chief General Manager (Project Anubhav), BPCL.

The partnership will create a digital customer experience for BPCL customers through 'Ufill' -- an innovative fuelling solution powered by Microsoft Azure.

Powered by Azure Analytics, BPCL is building a conversational AI platform - a chatbot called 'Urja' to provide access to anytime, anywhere customer support across platforms.

BPCL's digital centre called 'IRIS' will remotely monitor thousands of sensors, integrating across more than 19,000 fuel stations, retail terminals, bottling plants, consumer pumps, RDI (railway diesel installations) and VTS (vehicle tracking system), enabled by IoT-powered supply chains with Microsoft Azure.

"Bringing together BPCL's operational expertise with Microsoft's cloud and AI capabilities, our partnership will help fortify BPCL's business operations with trust and security at the core," said Anant Maheshwari, President, Microsoft India.

Microsoft has over 60 cloud regions across the globe with Azure available in 140 countries.