TIBCO Software Awards Ausgrid with Regional Innovation Award for 21st Century Smart Power Management

TIBCO Software Inc. (NASDAQ: TIBX), announced today that Ausgrid, operator of one of the largest electricity networks in Australia (powering 1.6 million homes and businesses over 22,275 square kilometers), is the winner of TIBCO's Regional Innovation Award for 21st Century Smart Power Management for the Asia-Pacific region.

As population and demand for power grows, especially in Asia and surrounding regions, utilities need to look beyond old models of pure resource consumption. Smart and innovative power management can have the same impact as building a new plant, without causing any environmental impact. The crucial requirement to supply efficient and ecologically sound power mechanisms is one of Asia's most critical infrastructure challenges, now and in the future. Ausgrid, formerly known as EnergyAustralia, has been designing and implementing a broad array of smart power management solutions in response to this need.

With more than 1.6 million network customers, Ausgrid is faced with a 4,000 times increase in data with "zero tolerance for data loss." The program, currently in a pilot phase, is installing 50,000 smart meters, although the platform has been architected to enable the operation of 2 million smart meters. Ausgrid wanted to leverage intelligence that could be derived from these massive amounts of data to understand demand ahead of time so that they could meet regulatory mandates for reliability and outage reduction.

With TIBCO solutions as the backbone for its smart grid and advanced metering infrastructure, Ausgrid is now able to manage its operational systems by providing a platform for integrating all its metering systems and services. The benefits impact various stakeholders from customers to regulators, including:

• improved power quality and reliability with no extensive outages
• improved asset life through better planning data and improved management of destructive events on the electrical network
• significant efficiencies in data entry and integrity, which has led to significant improvements in customer service, improved turnaround times, and lower network charges
• customer empowerment with ability to monitor and manage personal power consumption and costs; operators can predict future power consumption and balance energy sources in real time
• regulatory compliance, transparency and accountability
• facilitating environmental initiatives through energy conservation and application of green technologies, such as Home Area Networks (HAN), Customer Feedback technologies and Electric Vehicles (EV)

At TUCON 2011, TIBCO's annual customer and business partner conference, Ausgrid demonstrated its commitment to contextual mobility. As this sophisticated technology is being increasingly deployed, Ausgrid will be able to proactively apply business, personal and location context to customer interactions in real time, delivering a more compelling customer experience and reducing the impact of adverse events.

Ausgrid's distinction is derived from a shared vision of a strategic partnership with TIBCO Australia. A hybrid team of both Ausgrid and TIBCO Professional Services has developed and documented the platform, which is now being shared with other strategic clients in the Asia Pacific region. The combined Ausgrid delivery team is recognized as being the best in the region and a testament to what can be achieved when the focus is on excellence.

The TIBCO products employed in the Ausgrid Intelligent Energy Platform include:

• TIBCO ActiveMatrix® Service Grid
• TIBCO ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks™
• TIBCO BusinessEvents®
• TIBCO BPM Enterprise
• TIBCO Enterprise Message Service™
• TIBCO ActiveMatrix® Service Performance Manager
• TIBCO Spotfire®
• TIBCO® Adapters
• TIBCO Hawk®

Supporting Quote

"We'd like to congratulate Ausgrid on their continued dedication to facilitate more reliable energy distribution and metering in the face of what is a relatively immature landscape," said Mark Fahmy, managing director Asia Pacific/Japan, TIBCO. "With a massive increase in data volume from smart technologies, Ausgrid is a real-world example of how big data can be used to businesses' advantage to make intelligent decisions as events occur, and ultimately improve the approach to energy and customer management."