CES International and EnvoyWorldWide to Integrate the CES Centricity Outage Management System with Industry Leading Notification Solution.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

BEDFORD, Mass. & WASHINGTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 3, 2003

Companies Collaborate on the Industry's First Integrated Outage 

Management System - Automated Notification Solution

EnvoyWorldWide, a provider of real-time notification solutions, and CES International, leading provider of outage and network-management systems for distribution utilities, today announced an alliance to develop the industry's first integrated outage management and automated notification solution. The Alliance focuses on a solution comprised of CES' Centricity solution and EnvoyWorldWide's EnvoyXpress Communications platform and will be used to convey time sensitive information to business, critical care and residential customers.

According to Chartwell's recent report on Customer-Focused Outage Notification Services, outbound customer service and proactive customer messaging is an emerging trend among utility companies. Utilities have identified a variety of events of which to keep their customers informed including outages, status reports on outages, follow-up with customers after an outage, notification that a planned outage will occur, or early warnings that an unplanned outage may occur.

Designed specifically for the utility industry, the integrated solution is built leveraging the EnvoyXpress Communications platform. The integration, managed through EnvoyWorldWide's standards-based API, represents an expansion of the MyCentricity suite to include multi-modal communication support for pagers, email, landline and cell phone notifications of personalized, critical events such as power outages, curtailment initiatives and emergencies.

"CES, as a worldwide market leader, continues to innovate as evidenced by Centricity's latest release," said Don McDonnell, chief marketing officer, CES International. "The partnership with EnvoyWorldWide not only demonstrates a commitment to innovation by offering an end-to-end outage management and notification solution, but a commitment to our customers and their increasing business needs."

Utility interests will have the option to use one of two user interfaces - EnvoyXpress, where data from a company's internal customer information system is leveraged for a notification; or EnvoyProfiles, where critical care and business to business customers may opt-in to the types of events to which they'd prefer to be notified, while specifying device and schedule preferences. Both solutions are integrated seamlessly and elegantly into Centricity for a cohesive user experience. EnvoyWorldWide's real-time notification solutions are optimized for time-sensitive communications, including:

-- Integration with existing data source and enterprise

applications,

-- Escalation to multiple people or devices to ensure timely

receipt of information,

-- Interactive capabilities to solicit recipient response,

-- Delivery to wired and wireless devices,

-- Real-time tracking for a complete audit trail.

"EnvoyWorldWide's mission is to arm companies, across industries, with the ability to service customers proactively, and provide the tools to respond quickly and interactively when necessary, says Ben Levitan, president and CEO of EnvoyWorldWide. "We look forward to working with CES and their extensive customer roster to deliver effective notification solutions that drive operational efficiency."

The solution was announced last week at advanCES, CES International's annual user event in Washington D.C.

About EnvoyWorldWide

Headquartered in Bedford, Mass., EnvoyWorldWide provides the most proven and reliable communications network for delivering time-sensitive notifications. Organizations are using EnvoyWorldWide's real-time interaction management services to drive customer interactions, streamline supply chains, and ensure business continuity. EnvoyWorldWide's services communications-enable the enterprise to facilitate automated, fully interactive voice and text broadcasts to landline phones, faxes, email, pagers, SMS and WAP phones, PDAs, BlackBerrys and other wireless devices. Battery Ventures, Longworth Venture Partners and Sofinnova Partners EnvoyWorldWide. More information is available by calling 888.252.7837 or at www.envoyworldwide.com.

About CES International

CES International supplies real-time software solutions to utilities on five continents, serving more than 35 million metered accounts. CES International is the developer of the Centricity operations resource management (ORM) system, which includes the market's leading outage-management system, and the newly developed Energy Delivery Management (EDM) suite of network-management software. For more information, visit www.ces.com or call 1-800-450-0266. CES International - Redefining Connectivity.