Press Releases
Reliant Energy Chooses Market Leader GISBAgent® for Electronic Commerce in Texas Energy Market
April 2, 2001 • Birmingham, Alabama
Having established itself as the leading supplier for electronic commerce solutions for the deregulated Pennsylvania and New York state energy markets, Group 8760 has gained its second major client in the Texas marketplace.
Reliant Energy recently selected Group 8760's Gas Industry Standards Board-certified GISBAgent® software for energy transactions over the Internet. El Paso Energy had earlier implemented GISBAgent®, the most widely used Internet electronic commerce solution in the nation's competitive energy markets.
Robert Frazier, Reliant's IT Director for Deregulation, noted that Reliant is in the process of splitting into two companies and recently had to decide how to implement a GISB-compliant communication protocol for moving large amounts of data between market players within Texas. Frazier said the company decided not to develop a GISB-compliant solution in-house, choosing instead to perform a trial of Group 8760's GISBAgent®
"Our technical staff was greatly impressed by the ease of implementation and the quality of the technical support from Group 8760," Frazier said. " We subsequently purchased a copy of the product for each of our two companies. Group 8760 tailored the in-house training to concentrate on the aspects of the product we were particularly interested in learning about in depth."
Jim Buccigross, vice president of Group 8760's energy practice, said, "GISBAgent® is a solution that works right out off the box, which is why our product is the market leader. We're very pleased that Reliant has put its trust in Group 8760 and GISBAgent®."
Added Robert Gustafson, senior client manager-utilities for AMR Research Inc., which specializes in e-business strategies and technologies, "Group 8760 has much better market penetration than its competitors in providing electronic commerce solutions for the new, evolving marketplace for electricity and natural gas. They've proved they can get in there and get the job done."
Reliant Energy (NYSE: REI), based in Houston, is an international energy services and energy delivery company with approximately $29 billion in annual revenue and more than $32 billion in assets. The company has more than 23,000 megawatts of power generation in operation in the United States and is one of only three companies to rank among both the five largest power marketers and the five largest natural gas marketers in the nation. Reliant also has wholesale trading and marketing operations and retail marketing and distribution operations serve nearly four million electricity and natural gas customers in the U.S., and its Internet infrastructure and communications company services business customers in Texas.
Group 8760 has been helping utility companies leverage technological and regulatory changes since 1996. Its market-leading GISBAgent® software provides inbound and outbound Internet EDI and other file transport between trading partners over the Internet. GISBAgent clients include the majority of the utility distribution companies in the deregulated markets of Pennsylvania and New York state including Duquesne Light Company, GPU, Penn Power, UGI Utilities, National Fuel Distribution Corporation, Niagara Mohawk Power Corporation, New York State Electric & Gas, PG Energy, and Rochester Gas & Electric, in addition to 25 other North American energy clients. Additional information on Group 8760 is available on the Internet at http://www.8760.com or by contacting Helen Markland or Jim Mark at (205) 250-8053.