HOUSTON—November 22, 2005—UtiliPoint® International, Inc. (UtiliPoint), the utility and energy industry thought leader, today announced the completion of its “Evaluation and Benchmarking of Natural Gas Application Usage in North American Energy Companies” study. The report is now available for purchase on the UtiliPoint website.
“This is the first study of application usage, architectures and IT used to support the natural gas value chain from wellhead to burner tip,” said Dr. Gary M. Vasey, vice president of UtiliPoint's Trading & Risk Management practice. “The results of the study are intriguing and really supplement and add to the IT Benchmarking at North American Power Marketers report completed in 2004 to give a comprehensive picture of IT in gas and electric power marketing firms, utilities and other buyers/sellers of gas and power in North America.”
The study results show that around half of the applications used to support business process from well head to burner tip are provided by commercial vendors. Many of the vendor-provided solutions are older, often customized and, based on client/server architectures and, as a result, require more support. There is pent up demand to replace many of these older solutions to meet current business requirements but IT budgets are constrained.
The study looks in detail at sixteen application areas from production & revenue accounting through to gas storage, IT department budgets and expenditures, staffing and more based on responses from 28 North American energy companies. A summary is available on UtiliPoint's website at http://www.utilipoint.com/rci/details.asp?ProductID=1128.
About UtiliPoint® International, Inc.
UtiliPoint is a leader in providing consulting services to the energy industry. Our 72-year history and over 100 clients worldwide have led us to currently operate as an energy and utility consulting and issues analysis firm. Our staff is comprised of leading utility and energy experts with diverse backgrounds in utility generation, transmission & distribution, retail markets, mergers and acquisitions, new technologies, venture capital, information technology, outsourcing, renewable energy, regulatory affairs, and international issues.
Contacts:
Gary M. Vasey, Ph.D., Vice President, Trading & Risk Management Jon T. Brock, COO
Phone: 281.681.8020
E-mail: gvasey@utilipoint.com
Phone: 505.244.7607
E-mail: jbrock@utilipoint.com
