Advanced Utility Systems and HiQube Partner to Deliver CIS Analytics Solution

Integration of Harris subsidiary's CIS Infinity® solution with Altair’s HiQube® business intelligence platform offers unprecedented analytics capabilities to enhance customer service and operations.

HiQube, a division of Altair Engineering, Inc., and Advanced Utility Systems (Advanced), a division of N. Harris Computer Corporation, today announced a multi-year, non-exclusive agreement to develop and market a business analytics solution for Advanced’s CIS Infinity® utility customers. Branded as Infinity.BI, the stand-alone customer information systems (CIS) analytics solution will provide powerful new business analytics capabilities for Advanced’s CIS Infinity utility customers.

Through a direct integration of Altair’s HiQube business intelligence (BI) platform and Advanced’s CIS Infinity solution, Infinity.BI will be sold as a rapidly deployed business analytics module providing a rich set of standard dynamic reports and performance dashboards addressing critical operational and customer service metrics for utilities.

“More and more, utilities are requiring advanced BI functionality as part of their overall CIS deployment,” said Peter Fanous, general manager of Advanced Utility Systems. “Customer service, operational performance and smart grid initiatives are driving this demand and over the last year and a half we have evaluated many potential BI solution partners. We found that HiQube’s technology and scalability addresses both our short and long-term BI strategy and we are thrilled with what this partnership will offer CIS Infinity customers.”

The initial Infinity.BI solution will include self-service analytics functionality to analyze revenue and service consumption, cash flow, collections, service customer move-in/out activity, customer call volume and service orders. Additionally, Infinity.BI can be extended beyond the standard core offering to address utility-specific rate scheduling analysis and optimization, additional data store connections, branding, reports, dashboards, and performance metrics through consulting services agreements.

“The utility industry is in a state of transformational change in both business processes and operations infrastructure,” said Michael J. Kidder, senior vice president of marketing and OEM partnerships for HiQube. “Now more than ever, the ability to quickly explore and analyze large data stores of customer information without requiring a specialized and dedicated hardware appliance is essential to optimize rate schedules and time-of-use pricing while ensuring the highest level of customer service. We are very excited about partnering with Advanced to deliver a scalable and extensible analytics solution that accelerates robust decision-making for CIS Infinity customers today and in the future.”

Infinity.BI will be unveiled to the public during the 2011 Harris Customer Conference, Nov. 16-18, 2011 in Anaheim, Calif. As a platinum sponsor, HiQube will introduce and provide a live demonstration of Infinity.BI on Nov. 16 at 12:30 p.m. as part of Advanced’s customer-focused workshop series program. One-on-one live demonstrations also will be made available throughout the conference at HiQube’s exhibition booth (#P1).

Commercial availability of Infinity.BI is expected in early Q1 2012 following the successful completion of a detailed beta evaluation program with select utilities that comprise Advanced’s Executive Steering Committee.