Technological and digital innovation: why it is important for Eni
Innovation has always characterised Eni’s activities and key words such as “research”, “development” and “technology” are embedded in our DNA. Eni has grown and developed also thanks to a strong focus and investment in these areas, which today are at the centre of the strategy and of the energy transition path the company is following.
The Technology, R&D & Digital Business Group is charged with fostering innovation by optimising established technologies and developing breakthrough ones that have the potential to radically transform the energy market of the future.
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Technological and digital innovation is an essential lever to create value and transform our business to rapidly scale our technological solutions to industrial levels.
Today, digital innovation permeates all of our company and plays a decisive role in our transformation process. It enables and at the same time amplifies the opportunities provided by research and technology to achieve the Net Zero target by 2050.
In particular, the Digital & Information Technology unit stands alongside business to achieve strategic objectives, with a transversal and integrated approach, from the promotion of innovation and the introduction of new digital solutions to their industrialisation, with a strong focus on aspects of infrastructure resilience, operational excellence and security.
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The key elements of Eni's digital transformation
Digitalisation at Eni has a long history and today it extends to all business areas and processes with innovative solutions enabled by the use of:
Latest technologies
Algorithms that optimise the use of data
Cloud Services
Methods for resilience and cybersecurity
Eni's approach to digital transformation
The context of digital innovation is by its nature extensive, complex, fast and global.
Eni adopts an integrated approach designed to harmonise all phases and components of innovation.
Through partnerships with leading market observatories and participation in technology hubs and innovation ecosystems, we closely follow the evolution of technologies and of the market. Using a structured methodology that assesses the maturity and impact of emerging technologies in our context, we select those best suited for subsequent prototyping and large-scale implementation.
To guarantee and expand our digital skills, we have established Digital Competence Centers (DCCs), centres of excellence that oversee the adoption of digital and emerging technologies and promote widespread digital awareness inside and outside the company.
Our main competence centres specialise in cloud, data, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and supercomputing. They also play a central role in the adoption of new tools and methodologies, such as agile, design thinking and DevOps that support product teams and also involve the business.
Within this framework, the Enterprise Architecture competence centre provides centralised management of the evolution of technologies, architectures and platforms globally, thus promoting the spread of our digital strategy across the company.
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Eni's digital transformation is based on four pillars:
Data
A true business asset, it is critical for guiding decisions, gaining insights and achieving strategic goals. For us, being data driven means optimising the collection of data from multiple sources, such as customer interactions, market trends, internal processes and external sources.
Using advanced technologies and analytical tools, we can transform this raw data into meaningful insights, apply advanced analytical models and formulate concrete strategies.
To implement this approach, we have built a robust data infrastructure, a structured data platform and qualified skills, fostering a culture that enhances our ability to make data-driven decisions.
Governance, privacy and security are essential for a responsible management of data
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Artificial Intelligence
The currently available AI market methods and solutions offer unprecedented opportunities to develop valuable tools for our company’s businesses and processes. Our initiatives cover 4 key areas: scaled development of AI solutions at the service of business, prototyping increasingly complex use cases using state-of-the-art methodologies, ad-hoc workshops on AI solutions to continuously evaluate their adoption and value, and promoting a culture of responsible AI use across the company
Supercomputing
As we have long been aware of the growing importance and transformative power of digital technologies, we made the strategic decision of internalising computing power several years ago. To date, our HPC 4 and HPC5 supercomputers have a combined processing power of 70 petaflops/s and continue to evolve. Today, we use supercomputing for geosciences investigations, subsurface analyses or process and reservoir modelling, but we are also increasingly using it in the development of new energy technologies and to support the energy transition and decarbonization. Looking further ahead, we are developing a strong interest in quantum computing, which promises to be the new frontier of supercomputing.
The supercomputers are hosted at the Green Data Centre in Ferrera Erbognone, in the province of Pavia, which is equipped with a hybrid cloud evolution model that allows for an increasingly effective modernisation and evolution of the suite of applications and of the technological platforms, so that we can support the evolution of our business areas with innovative technologies and constantly updated services.
Skills and ecosystems
We have always considered people and their skills as a strategic asset and a driver of excellence. Now more than ever, the ongoing transformation is forcing us to evolve our models and develop new skills and specific professional expertise as well as formulating new strategies for developing and nurturing talent. Creating new skills through upskilling initiatives and collaboration with the ecosystems of our partners and of research centres, both nationally and internationally, expands our ability to lead technological innovation and accelerate transformation.
Today, digital tools facilitate an increasingly efficient management of our businesses, enabling us to:
- provide our operators with new digital technologies and tools for people to work more safely and efficiently
- develop digital twins of our assets, simulating plants and processes to analyse and predict complex situations and to train our operators in a fully safe environment
- digitalise our industrial facilities using artificial intelligence to maintain optimal operation, anticipate potential process anomalies, improve performance in terms of energy and operational efficiency and enhance safety while preventing unexpected events
- digitalise our processes through solutions tailored to our people, simplifying activities and making them more efficient, improving employee experience and ensuring maximum flexibility and resilience in our work
- support our commercial strategy based on “customer centricity” with digital solutions and platforms to meet the evolving needs of our B2B and B2C customers, strengthening customer engagement by offering them increasingly personalised products and services
- support the decarbonisation strategy through the development of all viable solutions for reducing emissions, like biofuels, bio-methane, circular processes to generate value from waste, CCUS and forestry
- accelerate technological advances by applying Artificial Intelligence techniques to optimise testing and prototyping cycles.
Eni's digital transformation is based on four pillars:
Data
A true business asset, it is critical for guiding decisions, gaining insights and achieving strategic goals. For us, being data driven means optimising the collection of data from multiple sources, such as customer interactions, market trends, internal processes and external sources.
Using advanced technologies and analytical tools, we can transform this raw data into meaningful insights, apply advanced analytical models and formulate concrete strategies.
To implement this approach, we have built a robust data infrastructure, a structured data platform and qualified skills, fostering a culture that enhances our ability to make data-driven decisions.
Governance, privacy and security are essential for a responsible management of data
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Artificial Intelligence
The currently available AI market methods and solutions offer unprecedented opportunities to develop valuable tools for our company’s businesses and processes. Our initiatives cover 4 key areas: scaled development of AI solutions at the service of business, prototyping increasingly complex use cases using state-of-the-art methodologies, ad-hoc workshops on AI solutions to continuously evaluate their adoption and value, and promoting a culture of responsible AI use across the company
Supercomputing
As we have long been aware of the growing importance and transformative power of digital technologies, we made the strategic decision of internalising computing power several years ago. To date, our HPC 4 and HPC5 supercomputers have a combined processing power of 70 petaflops/s and continue to evolve. Today, we use supercomputing for geosciences investigations, subsurface analyses or process and reservoir modelling, but we are also increasingly using it in the development of new energy technologies and to support the energy transition and decarbonization. Looking further ahead, we are developing a strong interest in quantum computing, which promises to be the new frontier of supercomputing.
The supercomputers are hosted at the Green Data Centre in Ferrera Erbognone, in the province of Pavia, which is equipped with a hybrid cloud evolution model that allows for an increasingly effective modernisation and evolution of the suite of applications and of the technological platforms, so that we can support the evolution of our business areas with innovative technologies and constantly updated services.
Skills and ecosystems
We have always considered people and their skills as a strategic asset and a driver of excellence. Now more than ever, the ongoing transformation is forcing us to evolve our models and develop new skills and specific professional expertise as well as formulating new strategies for developing and nurturing talent. Creating new skills through upskilling initiatives and collaboration with the ecosystems of our partners and of research centres, both nationally and internationally, expands our ability to lead technological innovation and accelerate transformation.
Today, digital tools facilitate an increasingly efficient management of our businesses, enabling us to:
- provide our operators with new digital technologies and tools for people to work more safely and efficiently
- develop digital twins of our assets, simulating plants and processes to analyse and predict complex situations and to train our operators in a fully safe environment
- digitalise our industrial facilities using artificial intelligence to maintain optimal operation, anticipate potential process anomalies, improve performance in terms of energy and operational efficiency and enhance safety while preventing unexpected events
- digitalise our processes through solutions tailored to our people, simplifying activities and making them more efficient, improving employee experience and ensuring maximum flexibility and resilience in our work
- support our commercial strategy based on “customer centricity” with digital solutions and platforms to meet the evolving needs of our B2B and B2C customers, strengthening customer engagement by offering them increasingly personalised products and services
- support the decarbonisation strategy through the development of all viable solutions for reducing emissions, like biofuels, bio-methane, circular processes to generate value from waste, CCUS and forestry
- accelerate technological advances by applying Artificial Intelligence techniques to optimise testing and prototyping cycles.
Digital technology leveraging computing power, data, artificial intelligence and the expertise of our people is accelerating transformation along three main lines: it makes our business increasingly efficient, accelerating the development of new areas of activity and helps us provide superior services to our customers.
Dario Pagani
Head of Digital & Information Technology of Eni
Supercomputer, at the center of our digital transformation strategy
Our digitalisation strategy is supported by the continuous technological evolution of our applications and of our Green Data Center, which ensures reliability to meet the company's computing needs and to operate along the entire value chain.
The role of digital in information security
We are aware of the impact of the ever-increasing pervasiveness of digital technology and therefore integrate cybersecurity into the development and implementation processes of all our products and services, in line with a security-by-design model. In addition, we are placing increasing attention on the implementation of digital services and technologies to minimise their environmental impact and promote conscientious practices within the company.
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