Echelon Corporation (Nasdaq:ELON), the leading technology supplier for the widely-used LonWorks(R) control networking standard, today announced that STROM B-Systems, a system supplier in the utilities sector, has entered into an agreement to become a Value-Added Reseller (VAR) of Echelon’s Networked Energy Services (NES) intelligent electricity metering system. STROM, a subsidiary of SISTEMA Group, the largest consumer-oriented private sector company in Russia and the Confederation of Independent States, will connect the NES infrastructure with its integrated data collection, processing, and billing solution to provide a complete back-office infrastructure for telecom, gas, water and electricity utilities.
“Automated meter management (AMM), next generation metering solutions best exemplified by Echelon’s NES system, represent a high-growth opportunity throughout Europe, driven both by EU-wide legislation designed to open markets and improve energy efficiency and utilities’ desires to provide higher quality service at lower operating cost,” said Mirko Jelcic, CEO at STROM. “With the NES system as part of our FORIS offering, we can offer electric utilities and multi-utilities the world’s most advanced AMM system as part of a complete, off-the-shelf data collection, billing, and customer care solution.”
STROM B-Systems is a system supplier for the utilities sector. Its FORIS product family fully supports the IS/IT requirements of utilities, including data collection and management, resource inventory and monitoring, flexible rating and discounting system, billing and inter-billing, fraud detection, customer relationship management (CRM), and integration with enterprise resource planning (ERP) software.
Echelon’s NES system provides an open, bidirectional, and extensible infrastructure that enables a comprehensive range of utility applications that can bring benefits to every aspect of a utility’s operation, from metering, to customer services, to distribution operations, to value-added services. The incorporation of the NES infrastructure should allow the company to expand the capabilities of its FORIS offering to include automated networked meter management and convergent billing.
“STROM’s well-established presence in the European, Eastern European and Russian utility and IT markets brings the NES VAR program a strong and very experienced partner in these regions,” said Ken Oshman, Echelon’s chairman and CEO. “We believe that STROM’s unique, future-proof offering can help lower costs, increase efficiency, and improve customer service for utilities now and for many years to come. The addition of STROM to our NES VAR program is an important element in furthering our utilities business strategy.”
The NES Value-Added Reseller (VAR) program is designed to establish Echelon’s NES system as a global standard for intelligent metering systems by enabling companies that provide products and services to the utility industry to adopt and adapt the NES infrastructure as the basis for their end-to-end metering solutions sold under the NES Powered by Echelon(TM) branding program.