MKS Inc. (MKS) (TSX: MKX) announced today that RWE npower, the UK´s largest electricity supplier, has selected MKS Integrity to automate the software release process for the company´s most critical software application - its customer billing system. Part of the RWE Group, the fifth largest industrial firm in Germany, RWE npower generates electricity and supplies gas, electricity and related services to around 6.8 million customers through its retail business, npower. The company operates and manages a flexible portfolio of power stations and is a market leader in renewable energy development, through its wind and hydro business, npower renewables.
RWE Systems UK is the Information Systems provider for RWE npower and RWE Trading, and today has around 1,200 IT staff working in 13 different locations across the UK. The core functions of RWE Systems UK include Service Management, Application Development and Support, Infrastructure Management and Procurement.
RWE Systems UK will implement MKS Integrity for RWE npower at their Residential Billing Systems Centre. MKS Integrity´s deployment management capabilities, coupled with its powerful process and workflow, will provide a workflow-based approach to software deployment, supporting the automation and enforcement of release management best practice for business critical billing systems. MKS Integrity provides RWE Systems with a secure, robust and flexible staging and deployment system, ensuring all changes made to the core residential billing system are implemented into production as part of an initiative to enhance the release management process. At the same time, MKS Integrity will provide the repeatability, reproducibility and automation to thus minimise risk to business systems, ensuring compliance goals are met.
"RWE npower has introduced MKS Integrity to support our business, providing us with full traceability and auditability from initial request for change through to the deployment of that change into production. We expect that with this implementation to automate the deployment process we´ll have an opportunity to reduce costs, streamline processes and enhance our reporting and overall confidence," said Jim Relton, Head of Release Management at RWE npower.
"We share the common values of customer focus, trust, forward thinking, reliability and performance, and we are delighted to welcome RWE Systems UK to MKS´s fast growing customer portfolio in the UK. RWE npower will gain an immediate and positive business impact from MKS Integrity. MKS´s automated software release process will directly improve systems availability, provide complete cradle-to-grave traceability and ensure best practice repeatability" said Rob Mackin, Managing Director, United Kingdom, MKS.
About RWE
RWE Systems and RWE npower are part of the RWE Group, one of Europe´s largest utility companies, employing over 85,000 people.
The Group has various businesses in the UK; RWE npower, which is the sister company for npower, which supplies over 6.6 million homes and businesses with electricity and gas in the UK. RWE Systems provides IT and related services to the RWE companies.
About MKS Integrity
MKS Integrity is an enterprise software platform that coordinates and manages software application activities and configuration items through the establishment of a unified application data framework to deliver productivity, visibility and compliance. MKS Integrity´s unified approach provides IT and software engineering organisations with end to end coverage across the application development lifecycle, with capabilities including requirements management, to software configuration management (SCM), software change management, build management and test management, through to deployment and release management, and IT portfolio management. MKS Integrity facilitates software applications management within large organisations that have a need for enterprise class scalability, multi-platform capability, and must support multiple geographic locations, whilst requiring traceability, audit ability and granular access control and security. By spanning all aspects of the application development lifecycle, MKS supports critical business transformations including SOA, application rationalisation and IT outsourcing.
MKS Integrity´s unique single architecture approach to application lifecycle management delivers uncompromised visibility, flexibility and scalability across software projects, platforms (Windows, UNIX, System i and Mainframe), custom and packaged applications (SAP and Oracle/PeopleSoft), as well as teams and locations. MKS Integrity can manage any IT workflow or software process and supports process frameworks such as ITIL, CMMI and CobiT, enabling global development organisations to better meet IT governance and compliance goals whilst achieving high levels of software process maturity, measuring project performance with real-time software metrics and making substantial productivity gains for an overall low total cost of ownership.
Copyright © 2007 MKS Inc. MKS and MKS Toolkit are trademarks or registered trademarks of MKS Inc. All other trademarks mentioned in this release are the property of their respective owners.
This news release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties, which may cause actual results to differ materially from the statements made. When used in this document, the words "may", "would", "could", "will", "intend", "plan", "anticipate", "believe", "estimate", "expect" and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Such statements reflect the Company´s current views with respect to future events and are subject to such risks and uncertainties. Many factors could cause our actual results to differ materially from the statements made including those factors detailed from time to time in filings made by the Company with Canadian securities regulatory authorities. Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or should assumptions underlying the forward looking statements prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those described herein as intended, planned, anticipated or expected. Although the Company believes the expectations represented by such forward looking statements are reasonable, there can be no assurance that those expectations will prove to be correct. The Company does not intend and does not assume any obligation to update these forward-looking statements.
RWE Systems UK is the Information Systems provider for RWE npower and RWE Trading, and today has around 1,200 IT staff working in 13 different locations across the UK. The core functions of RWE Systems UK include Service Management, Application Development and Support, Infrastructure Management and Procurement.
RWE Systems UK will implement MKS Integrity for RWE npower at their Residential Billing Systems Centre. MKS Integrity´s deployment management capabilities, coupled with its powerful process and workflow, will provide a workflow-based approach to software deployment, supporting the automation and enforcement of release management best practice for business critical billing systems. MKS Integrity provides RWE Systems with a secure, robust and flexible staging and deployment system, ensuring all changes made to the core residential billing system are implemented into production as part of an initiative to enhance the release management process. At the same time, MKS Integrity will provide the repeatability, reproducibility and automation to thus minimise risk to business systems, ensuring compliance goals are met.
"RWE npower has introduced MKS Integrity to support our business, providing us with full traceability and auditability from initial request for change through to the deployment of that change into production. We expect that with this implementation to automate the deployment process we´ll have an opportunity to reduce costs, streamline processes and enhance our reporting and overall confidence," said Jim Relton, Head of Release Management at RWE npower.
"We share the common values of customer focus, trust, forward thinking, reliability and performance, and we are delighted to welcome RWE Systems UK to MKS´s fast growing customer portfolio in the UK. RWE npower will gain an immediate and positive business impact from MKS Integrity. MKS´s automated software release process will directly improve systems availability, provide complete cradle-to-grave traceability and ensure best practice repeatability" said Rob Mackin, Managing Director, United Kingdom, MKS.
About RWE
RWE Systems and RWE npower are part of the RWE Group, one of Europe´s largest utility companies, employing over 85,000 people.
The Group has various businesses in the UK; RWE npower, which is the sister company for npower, which supplies over 6.6 million homes and businesses with electricity and gas in the UK. RWE Systems provides IT and related services to the RWE companies.
About MKS Integrity
MKS Integrity is an enterprise software platform that coordinates and manages software application activities and configuration items through the establishment of a unified application data framework to deliver productivity, visibility and compliance. MKS Integrity´s unified approach provides IT and software engineering organisations with end to end coverage across the application development lifecycle, with capabilities including requirements management, to software configuration management (SCM), software change management, build management and test management, through to deployment and release management, and IT portfolio management. MKS Integrity facilitates software applications management within large organisations that have a need for enterprise class scalability, multi-platform capability, and must support multiple geographic locations, whilst requiring traceability, audit ability and granular access control and security. By spanning all aspects of the application development lifecycle, MKS supports critical business transformations including SOA, application rationalisation and IT outsourcing.
MKS Integrity´s unique single architecture approach to application lifecycle management delivers uncompromised visibility, flexibility and scalability across software projects, platforms (Windows, UNIX, System i and Mainframe), custom and packaged applications (SAP and Oracle/PeopleSoft), as well as teams and locations. MKS Integrity can manage any IT workflow or software process and supports process frameworks such as ITIL, CMMI and CobiT, enabling global development organisations to better meet IT governance and compliance goals whilst achieving high levels of software process maturity, measuring project performance with real-time software metrics and making substantial productivity gains for an overall low total cost of ownership.
Copyright © 2007 MKS Inc. MKS and MKS Toolkit are trademarks or registered trademarks of MKS Inc. All other trademarks mentioned in this release are the property of their respective owners.
This news release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties, which may cause actual results to differ materially from the statements made. When used in this document, the words "may", "would", "could", "will", "intend", "plan", "anticipate", "believe", "estimate", "expect" and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Such statements reflect the Company´s current views with respect to future events and are subject to such risks and uncertainties. Many factors could cause our actual results to differ materially from the statements made including those factors detailed from time to time in filings made by the Company with Canadian securities regulatory authorities. Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or should assumptions underlying the forward looking statements prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those described herein as intended, planned, anticipated or expected. Although the Company believes the expectations represented by such forward looking statements are reasonable, there can be no assurance that those expectations will prove to be correct. The Company does not intend and does not assume any obligation to update these forward-looking statements.
