Utilities

Competition Driving Industry to Specialize and Collaborate to Capture New Market.

ARMONK, NY - IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced the results of a global research report that reveals the banking industry is counting on new market expansion, particularly in emerging markets, to fuel growth and efficiency opportunities over the next five years, yet banks say they are not prepared to seize these opportunities.

The report, "No Bank is an Island: Get Global Before Globalization Gets You," indicates 69 percent of banking executives acknowledge their organization is not operating in a globally integrated fashion. As a result, few banks are positioned to effectively operate outside their domestic markets or compete in key emerging markets such as China, South Korea, India, Ireland, and Turkey where demand for new banking products and services is set for rapid growth.

ARMONK, NY - 31 Jan 2008: IBM (NYSE: IBM) announced today that it has received approval of its proposed acquisition of Cognos (NASDAQ: COGN) (TSX: CSN) from the Canadian Minister of Industry under the Investment Canada Act.

In connection with the approval under the Investment Canada Act, IBM has made several important commitments to the Minister of Industry in relation to Cognos' operations and employees in Canada that highlight the net benefit of the acquisition to Canada. These include commitments relating to access to IBM's global reach, Technology portfolio, partner network and customer base in order to grow sales of Cognos products and solutions, employment levels in Canada, the main center of research and development in Canada, the funding of research and development in Canada, and ensuring that senior managers are either Canadians or are based in Canada.

WUXI, CHINA and ARMONK, NY - 01 Feb 2008: IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced it will establish the first Cloud Computing Center for software companies in China, which will be situated at the new Wuxi Tai Hu New Town Science and Education Industrial Park in Wuxi, China.

The center will offer emerging Chinese software companies the ability to tap into a virtual computing environment to support their development activities. It will be established through an agreement signed today between IBM and Wuxi Tai Lake Industry Investment and Development Company Limited.

IBM will work with Wuxi Tai Lake Industry Investment and Development Company Limited; the Wuxi municipal government; and its business partners to build the China Cloud Computing Center, which will be a shared facility providing each software company in the park with its own virtualized computing resource. For example, a company will be able to use the allocated resource for designing, developing and testing its software products. Such virtual environments can replace the traditional data center model, in which each company owns and manages its own hardware and software.

Financial Services Company to Accelerate and Centralize Analysis and Reporting with Oracle® Fusion Middleware
Redwood SHORES, Calif., Oracle today announced that Fifth Third Bancorp is upgrading to Oracle's Hyperion Planning to simplify the integration of financial and operational planning and provide users new levels of flexibility. The Cincinnati, Ohio-based bank is also implementing Oracle's Hyperion Financial Management to perform financial consolidation, reporting and analysis in a single application, enabling reduced risk and facilitating compliance. These components of Oracle(r) Fusion Middleware provide Fifth Third Bancorp with enhanced visibility, analysis and flexibility to help improve operations and rapidly capitalize on business opportunities.

Advanced Metering Company Teams with Oracle to Deliver Oracle Utilities Applications

REDWOOD SHORES, Calif. 29-JAN-2008 05:00 AM Oracle today announced that advanced metering and energy efficiency company, Cellnet+Hunt, has deployed an Oracle(r) Grid to support utility companies across North America. Built using Oracle Database 10g, Oracle Real Application Clusters, Oracle Automatic Storage Management and Oracle Enterprise Manager 10g, Cellnet+Hunt's Grid delivers the performance, scalability, business continuity, and the flexibility required to deliver its wireless metering network applications and services.

REDWOOD SHORES, Calif. 05-FEB-2008 05:05 AM Oracle today announced that Forrester Research highlighted Oracle's next-generation operational support system solutions (NGOSS) in the independent research firm's recent report, "Oracle Is Well Prepared to Address NGOSS Opportunities," (December 2007) part of its "NGOSS SWOT" series. The report notes Oracle's commitment "to addressing BSS/OSS telecom requirements."

In the report, Forrester Senior Analyst Michele Pelino highlights Oracle's modular, standards-based software products and individual product or full-suite sales options, noting, "This productized, modular strategy fits well into the standards-based, commercial, off-the-shelf IT environment that telecom operators are moving toward in the next-generation OSS arena. In addition, Oracle leverages the TM Forum's enhanced Telecom Operations Map (eTOM) framework, shared information database (SID) and other NGOSS principles during the product development process."

More than 65 Global Utilities Selected or Implemented Oracle Utilities Software in 2007

Distributech, Tampa, Fla.22-JAN-2008 -- Oracle today announced that more than 44 utilities have implemented and 22 utilities have selected Oracle(r) Utilities industry-leading software over the last year to help them adapt more nimbly to deregulation, meet ever-evolving customer demands, enhance operational excellence and deliver on commitments to environmental sustainability. The Oracle Utilities portfolio of proven software, which includes Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing and Meter Data Management, integrates industry mission-critical functionality with the capabilities of Oracle Applications, Oracle Fusion Middleware and Oracle Database.

Enhanced Application Enables Utilities to Improve Distribution Management and Accelerate Outage Identification and Resolution

Distributech, Tampa, Fla.22-JAN-2008 -- Oracle today announced the availability of Oracle(r) Utilities Network Management System Release 1.8.0, an integrated suite of real-time operations Technology applications designed to improve network reliability, maximize asset utilization, reduce outage durations and increase customer satisfaction. This new release builds on the product's market leadership1 in outage management with new enhancements to help utilities improve distribution management, including new applications for Fault Location, Isolation and Service Restoration, as well as Volt/Var Optimization.

Global Energy Company Employing Service Suite Enterprise Workforce Management Solution to Enhance Field Service Efficiency and Maximize Customer Satisfaction

ATLANTA, August 21, 2007 – Ventyx™, the leading Service Delivery Management (SDM) solution provider, today announced a significant new contract with PPL Electric Utilities. PPL selected the Service Suite enterprise workforce management solution from Ventyx to enhance the efficiency of scheduling, dispatch and wireless communication for its entire field workforce.

PPL Electric Utilities delivers electricity to approximately 1.4 million customers across a 10,000-square-mile area in Central and Eastern Pennsylvania. The utility maintains more than 48,000 miles of transmission and distribution lines across its 29-county service territory and is investing more than $1.4 billion in improvements to its delivery system over the next five years in order to maintain and improve reliability.

Solution to Help Maintain Competitive Advantage in the Expanding Contestable Electricity Market

REDWOOD SHORES, Calif. 14-AUG-2007 05:05 AM Oracle today announced that Tasmania, Australia's Aurora Energy has selected Oracle(r) Utilities Customer Care and Billing to assist in the ongoing delivery of superior Customer Service in the Tasmanian and Australian national energy markets. Aurora Energy plans to implement the solution to help manage customer account and billing information in near real time and continue providing best-quality customer experiences as more energy providers enter the Tasmanian market.

Leading Analyst Firm Positions SAP in Leaders Quadrant for Utilities Customer Information Systems

WALLDORF, Germany - August 14, 2007 - SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) today announced that Gartner, Inc. has positioned SAP in the leaders quadrant of this year’s “Magic Quadrant for Utilities Customer Information Systems, 1H071” based on completeness of vision and ability to execute on that vision. Gartner defines leaders as “vendors that would normally be included in shortlists for Customer Information systems (CIS) products, for all types of utilities, worldwide. They perform profitably, grow their revenue and have a presence in all major markets. Their functionality is above average, and their Technology and scalability are leading edge. These vendors would be followed and tracked by other CIS vendors.”

Version 7 Increases Adoption in Government, Higher Education, and Utilities Industries
South San Francisco, Calif. July 31, 2007 – Actuate Corporation (NASDAQ: ACTU), the leader in Business Intelligence, Performance Management and Reporting Applications, today announced that version 7 of the Actuate Performancesoft Suite has added 283 customers to its customer base, predominantly in areas across the public sector, including 94 Local Government and Government Services organizations, 22 Federal Government Departments and Agencies and 18 State Governments and Education organizations.

The Actuate Performancesoft Suite includes Actuate Performancesoft Views, a robust Performance Management application that offers at-a-glance access to performance metric information; Actuate Performancesoft BI, a custom reporting application that enables drill down into record level detail for root cause analysis; and Actuate Performancesoft Track, an activity and initiative management application that provides executive level Insight into the activities that drive organizational performance.

REDWOOD SHORES, Calif. 25-JUL-2007 05:05 AM Oracle today announced that Fairfield City Council of New South Wales, Australia has successfully implemented Oracle(r) Utilities Work and Asset Management. The implementation delivers a comprehensive view of the city's numerous infrastructure assets, enabling greater efficiency in making strategic management decisions.
Fairfield City is home to approximately 182,000 people. The city covers an area of approximately 104 square kilometers and incorporates 27 suburbs. The City Council's vision includes responsibly maintaining and managing the city's built and natural assets, infrastructure, landscape and cultural centers.

Hendersonville, Tennessee and Toronto Canada. July 11, 2007

Advanced Utility Systems Corporation (Advanced) is pleased to announce that Hendersonville Utility District (HUD) has selected CIS Infinity® as its Customer Information and billing solution for its 15,000 water and wastewater customers.

“We (Advanced) are very excited with HUD’s decision to move forward with CIS Infinity and its add-on modules“, comments Steve Hammond, Harris Vice President for the Advanced Business Unit. “We are also pleased to have HUD be our first client in the state of Tennessee.”

HUD’s implementation will include CIS Infinity Version 3.1, built around a .NET framework, as well as the following add-on modules that are tightly integrated with CIS Infinity.

IFS, the global enterprise applications company, has signed a contract with a major North American utility company to implement IFS Applications. The value of the contract is US $2.5 million in licenses and implementation services.

IFS prioritizes the energy and utilities industry and has more than 140 customers involved in power generation, transmission & distribution and water & sewage. These include the world's largest hydropower plant, Three Gorges (P. R. China), nuclear power plants OKG (Sweden), PBMR (South Africa) and Qinshan (P. R. China), grid operators such as Svenska Kraftnät (Sweden), Statnett (Norway) and TenneT (The Netherlands) as well as distributors such as Vattenfall (Sweden), Fortum (Sweden), and Hafslund Energi (Norway). Reliable and safe Asset management and workforce management are critical processes in the energy and utility industry, to which IFS has provided solutions for more than 20 years.

Creates World’s Largest Privately Held Software Provider to Utility Industry

ATLANTA and BOULDER, Colo., USA, June 14, 2007 – Ventyx™, the leading Service Delivery Management (SDM) solution provider, today announced that it has acquired Global Energy Decisions LLC (Global Energy), a provider of integrated software, data and advisory services to the worldwide electric utility industry and its supply chain.

Global Energy delivers utility industry solutions for generation asset and portfolio optimization, energy trading and risk management, schedule management, price and load forecasting, maintenance optimization, resource planning, fuel budgeting, plant betterment and environmental Compliance analysis. The solutions are based on a common framework of software applications, energy markets data and advisory services. Global Energy has worldwide relationships with 400 energy market participants and more than 175 installed software clients and 150 installed database clients -- making the company a leader in providing integrated analytics, planning, energy trading and operations management solutions.

SAP Reigns in CIS Technology Vendor Analysis Matrix for Municipals, Investor-Owned Utilities and Deregulated Markets

WALLDORF, Germany - Solidifying its market leadership in the utilities industry, SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) today announced that UtiliPoint® International, Inc., a prominent research-based consulting firm, places SAP as the number one business software provider in three of its 2007 Technology Vendor Analysis Matrix (TVAM) rankings. UtiliPoint’s annual study evaluates Customer Information systems (CIS) vendors for the North American utility and energy market based on primary research and data collected from vendors, utilities and peers in the marketplace. SAP tops the rankings “CIS Providers to Municipals,” “CIS Providers to IOUs (Investor-Owned Utilities),” and “CIS Providers to Deregulated Markets.”

Mincom supports utility company to transform its business

Brisbane,- Mincom, a leading global software and services provider to asset intensive industries, today announced that Ergon Energy, Queensland electricity distributor with a network covering 97% of the state and $6.7 billion in assets under management, has gone live with Mincom Ellipse in a major business transformation project.

Project JET (Joint Enterprise Transformation implementation project between Ergon Energy, ENERGEX and SPARQ Solutions with Mincom), represents the largest and most fully integrated ERP system ever installed in an electricity company by Mincom. The implementation included all modules of Mincom Ellipse and a host of other third party applications and systems, providing an integrated solution across HR/Payroll, Finance, Logistics, Assets & Works Management and Health, Safety & Environment streams.

MONTREAL, January 19, 2007 — TecSys Inc. (TSX: TCS), an industry-leading Supply Chain Management (SCM) software company announced today that one of the leading providers of industrial, medical and specialty gases, equipment and supplies in North East United States has selected the TECSYS/TrackAbout combined solution to move forward to an industry-specific distribution system, away from its old legacy technology.

With an average capacity of 40,000 cylinders per month, this North East distributor is equipped with an automated and palletized cylinder fill plant in Naugatuck, CT. Additional locations are in Wappingers Falls, NY, Danbury, CT, Berlin, CT, and White Plains, NY, to service customers in the metropolitan New York and Connecticut marketplace.

Nuclear Facilities Upgrade Work and Supply Chain Management Software

Atlanta, January 16, 2007 – Indus International Inc., a leading Service Delivery Management solution provider, today announced that Entergy Corporation (NYSE: ETR) has gone into full production on a standardized work management and Supply Chain system based upon the latest enterprise asset management (EAM) software from Indus. The company has implemented a single Indus Supply Chain solution across their regulated utility business, as well as standardized and upgraded the work management systems in their Southern Nuclear stations. Entergy also replaced a previous Indus solution at their Vermont Yankee Nuclear Station.