ATLANTA, GA.; November 6, 2007 – Ventyx™, the world’s largest private software provider to the utility industry, today announced general availability of the company’s industry-leading customer information system (CIS)/billing solution, Customer Suite 4.1. The new release delivers improved data security and increased flexibility in charge calculations, billing and service order management. These key enhancements are in high demand throughout the energy and utility industry, as evidenced by a number of leading utilities who have already established plans toimplement the new release.

"Customer Suite 4.1 continues Ventyx’s strong progress in delivering innovative solutions to utilities' complex business problems,” said Ventyx Chief Technology Office Steve Carpenter. "Today’s challenging energy market and increasing customer demands require customer management solutions which enable flexible rate calculations based on a diverse set of variables, as well as efficient billing and service order management – all while ensuring customers' personal information is protected from theft. Our latest release of Customer Suite meets all of these critical needs. As a result, we expect that it will add to our market leadership demonstrated by the more than 100 utilities already utilizing our CIS solution."

Customer Suite 4.1 includes numerous key enhancements to the charge calculation, billing and service order generation processes, as well as improvements to the user interface. Among the improved features are the following:

• Flexible Charge Calculation. Provides the flexibility to develop external algorithms to be used during the charge calculation process. Also enables percentage discounts and user-defined weather normalization adjustments to be applied to calculated charges.
• Security and Data Encryption. Provides data protection for sensitive customer information by encrypting at the database level, masking the user interface and masking reports.
  Ventyx Introduces Customer Suite 4.1,
• Flexible billing. Provides the ability to generate charges and produce a bill for a person who does not have an established premises and service with the utility, such as an out-of-service customer. Also enables billing for storm water services to cover the costs of storm water planning, maintenance and upgrade activities.
• Flexible service order management. Enables utilities to create service orders without requiring them to be tied to a customer or premises, in order to manage activities such as capping an overflowing fire hydrant, remove water pooling in a street or repairing a pot hole.

"The numerous enhancements in Customer Suite 4.1 are designed to help Ventyx clients achieve critical business goals," added Carpenter. "The solution enables clients to reduce their cost to serve customers through integration of key features and analytical tools. It also helps Ventyx meet key goals including acquiring new clients in one of our core markets, inspiring existing clients to upgrade to leverage the latest technological advances, and most importantly, maintaining the highest customer satisfaction possible."

Clients Planning Implementations
The importance of the enhanced features in Customer Suite 4.1 is highlighted by the fact that, even before its release, several Ventyx clients had already made plans to implement the new solution. Among these clients are Connexus Energy; City of Fort Collins, Colorado; National Water Commission of Jamaica; City of Provo, Utah; and City of Wichita, Kansas.

As a recent winner of Ventyx’s annual Award for Excellence in Business Results, Connexus Energy has been a long-time user of Customer Suite. “As one of the largest and fastest growing electric distribution cooperatives in Minnesota, Connexus Energy must stay up-to-date on the latest technological advances to help us keep up with growing demand while maintaining the highest levels of customer satisfaction,” said Julian Jones, Manager - Customer Operations at Connexus Energy. “With Customer Suite 4.1 we see the opportunity to meet our exacting needs while implementing a baseline product. As a result, we can continue streamlining our customer service processes today while laying the foundation to easily implement future advances in the product in the years to come."

“Fort Collins Utilities is preparing to upgrade to CIS version 4.1 for expanded functionality, to stay current with technology and to improve service to our customers,” said Curtis Miller, Utilities Technology and Customer Service Manager for Fort Collins Utilities. "Version 4.1 includes synchronization of billing dates for metered and non-metered services, allowing for coordinated billing dates (days of service) for electric, water, wastewater and stormwater services. Also Ventyx Introduces Customer Suite 4.1, included in this release is expanded functionality for stormwater rates, more secure data through encryption and improved archiving/purging."

"After evaluating the new features in Customer Suite 4.1, it was apparent that implementing the release held several significant advantages," said Wade Pascal, Utility Customer Service Manager at City of Wichita. "Primary among these was the opportunity to eliminate a heavily customized charge calc and to have multiple-period billing adjustments apply to history-based charges. Contingent upon approval of a revised contract and budget by the City Council, implementation of this release will enable Wichita Water Utilities to basically stay with a zero mod approach, which carries with it significant long-term advantages."

About Ventyx
Ventyx is the leading provider of best-of-breed software solutions which enable energy, utilities, telecommunications, broadband and other commercial field service organizations to optimize the management of their customers, workforce, spare parts inventory, equipment, tools and documentation -- empowering organizations to maximize efficiencies in their customer relationships, facilities, workforce and field service operations. The Ventyx Global Energy Decisions business unit is a leading provider of 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. With offices in North America, Europe, the Middle East and Asia-Pacific, Ventyx has more than 700 clients in select asset-intensive service-based industries.

Ventyx is a trademark of Ventyx Inc. Other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.

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