Hydro One Automates Contract Management With Upside

Market Wire, 20050229

Upside Software Inc., an integrated enterprise solution provider, announced today the signing of an agreement with Hydro One for the purchase and deployment of Upside Software's enterprise contract management eBusiness products - UpsideContract and UpsideBilling.

UpsideContract streamlines the contract management process beginning with the issuing of RFX (e.g. RFP - Request For Proposals), contract creation, negotiation and awarding through to on-going monitoring and performance tracking as well as contract renewals and amendments. The software can help organizations streamline their operations and reduce related expenses by up to 80%. The demand for contract management software is growing steadily. According to Gartner Group, the market for contract management software will hit $20 billion US by 2007. As organizations understand the incredible return on investment (ROI) opportunities resulting in contract management software implementations, the software popularity will increase even more.

"The selection of Upside Software's Contract Management module by Hydro One is a great win for us and will set the standard for energy sector related organizations in North America - Hydro One is a leader in their space" said Upside Software CEO, Ashif Mawji. Mr. Mawji went on to say, "We are delighted to continue our leadership in the enterprise contract management software market and expand our list of top-notch customers in different verticals."

"The Contract Management system must be tightly integrated with our other enterprise-critical systems, including asset management, document management and financials" explained Hitesh Seth, Director of Information Technology at Hydro One. "We evaluated the solution technologies from close to a dozen leading Contract Management vendors, and found the Upside products best suited to our needs. Rapid deployment potential, high levels of data security and responsiveness to evolving customer needs were other key indicators for us. We were very pleased with the feedback from existing Upside clients in this regard."

Core functionality for the Hydro One Enterprise Contract Management System will be available by the end of this year. Integration with existing enterprise applications will be complete in January 2003.

About Hydro One

Hydro One Inc. is a holding company that operates through its subsidiaries in electricity transmission and distribution and telecom businesses. Its largest subsidiary, Hydro One Networks, owns and operates the 28,400 kilometre province wide high-voltage transmission network that delivers electricity to large industrial customers and municipal utilities, and a 122,000 kilometre low-voltage distribution system in Ontario that serves about 1.2 million end-use customers and smaller municipal utilities.

About Upside Software Inc.

Upside Software provides integrated enterprise solutions that help streamline financial and business operations for companies of any size. The company's web-based solutions focus on electronic billing, contract management, expense claim management and time-based resource booking management and are based on Microsoft technologies. Through improved business processes and leveraged business intelligence, Upside Software's customers can reduce operating costs and improve customer and supplier relationships. The company's corporate and ASP implementations are delivered to customers within 40 days and provide a full return-on-investment (ROI) in less than one year. For more information about Upside Software and its suite of business solutions, visit the company's Web site at www.upsidesoft.com.