SeeBeyond Becoming the Industry Standard for Global Energy Companies; Electricity and Energy Companies Adopt eXchange eBusiness Integration Suite for the Industry Supply Web

Business Wire, Nov 7, 2000

Business Editors and Technology/Energy Writers

REDWOOD SHORES, Calif. & LONDON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 7, 2000

SeeBeyond (Nasdaq:SBYN), a leading global provider of eBusiness Integration (eBI) solutions, continues to reinforce its leadership of the utilities industry as the solution of choice for major players in the industry distribution and supply web, where it is rapidly becoming the de facto standard.

British Energy, ENRON's Portland General Electric, Equilon, ERCOT, Florida Power & Light, Innogy (demerger from National Power), Northern Electric and Gas, Power Gen, Scottish and Southern Energy, TXU, TOSCO and others have all selected SeeBeyond to streamline their businesses and manage internal and external supply web processes. The proven, end-to-end integration solutions from SeeBeyond are providing the technology platform that allows energy and utility companies to rapidly adapt to changing energy market dynamics.

Globally, deregulation marks the opening of the energy services market, allowing competition and giving freedom of choice to consumers. New competition is forcing gas and electricity utilities to re-evaluate their strategies for managing new risks. For example, in England and Wales, the electricity pool, or wholesale market, has been a key element in restructuring and privatizing the UK's electricity sector since 1990. Its influence on the introduction of competition into energy markets worldwide has been enormous, and many countries have introduced their own wholesale markets based, at least in part, on the pool. In the United States, the deregulation of the electric utilities market has opened the door for sweeping changes to the energy market structure, as large utilities companies disaggregate their power generation and transmission functions, and new retail competitors and energy trading pools emerge.

SeeBeyond Makes The Competitive Difference

SeeBeyond has enabled energy companies to meet the requirements to participate in these new markets. Deregulation means that electricity companies must integrate their supply web processes electronically to continue to compete successfully. The SeeBeyond e*Xchange eBusiness Integration(TM) Suite provides the architecture to enable them to comply with new government standards, such as those set by the Office of Electricity Regulation in the UK for freedom of information exchange. The ability to integrate systems, applications, and trading partners rapidly gives these enterprises faster time to market and increased flexibility, both of which are necessities in these fast-moving markets. The SeeBeyond eBI suite is the only integration solution to provide a real-time view, in conjunction with management and deployment capabilities, across the global enterprise and out to the extended enterprise of trading partners and business networks.

"In times of extraordinary change in the energy industry, companies must harness technology to operate more efficiently, reduce costs, leverage their combined assets and communicate effectively with customers and trading partners, anticipating and meeting customer demand for new products and services," said Jim Demetriades, founder, chairman and CEO for SeeBeyond. "SeeBeyond provides essential solutions to keep energy companies ahead of the competition by combining experience in delivering mission-critical, high-availability systems for global customers with powerful, high performance, network-centric technology."

"Energy customers in the new deregulated market have had to analyze eProcess flows among suppliers and optimize their supply webs," said David Bennett, vice president and general manager of EMEA for SeeBeyond. "Energy is the ultimate perishable commodity and the next phase is to take those gains to an exchange."

Customers Depend on SeeBeyond

According to Neil Palfreyman, Team Leader for Platform Services, Innogy, Plc, "We simply couldn't have met our deregulation targets without SeeBeyond, which would have meant we couldn't compete in this highly competitive new market."

"Following an evaluation and proof of concept we were able to verify that SeeBeyond offered a product that was good value for money, easy to deploy, and would enable us to get up and running quickly, which is essential in this industry where accuracy and timeliness of data flows is critical," said Logan Kerss, Technical Infrastructure Manager at Powergen.

SeeBeyond's solution also supports the capabilities required to operate under the UK's New Electricity Trading Arrangements (NETA) designed to bring more competition into the market for wholesale electricity in England and Wales, a market with a turnover of more than (pound)7 billion. SeeBeyond's flagship integration platform, e*Gate(TM) Integrator, allows participants such as power exchanges to implement parallel systems both to trade electricity amongst themselves and interact with the central systems at the same time, which makes the program one of the largest and most comprehensive IT developments in recent years.