While Toshiba received the award for the "most mission-critical Ingres System," BPCL is the recipient of the "greatest competitive advantage gained by implementing Ingres" award for gaining maximum advantage by improving computerised business systems worldwide.

"We are extremely pleased with the variety and ingenuity Toshiba and Bharat put into their `Site of the Year' solutions," said Yogesh Gupta, CA senior vice-president for product strategy. "Both companies demonstrated extensive and resourceful utilisation of Ingres technology in developing mission-critical solutions that give them competitive edges in their respective industries," he said.

BPCL, which is structured into six strategic units based on business processes, is planning to increase its service levels for itsmore than 30 million customers, thereby becoming a preferred supplier.

To meet the challenges of the deregulated business environment in India and the growing information needs of its strategic business units for decision-making, the Information System department at BPCL created a data warehouse that hosts all the functional areas such as sales, distribution and finance.

"Ingres allows us to meet our mission-critical application needs by providing a reliable and secure solution for managing critical information for our day-to-day business operations," BPCL general manager, Anand Teltumbde, was quoted as saying in a press note.

"It also helps us to provide macro level information views of the company's value drivers as well as performance levels from multiple sources, all through innovative applications based on Ingres."

The recipients of the award will be given paid trips to New Orleans for CA-World 1999, the company's worldwide technology users' conference.