Reliant Energy Achieves ROI from Retail Electricity Transactional Hub Powered by Mercator InsideDataExchange.

Business Editors

WILTON, Conn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 29, 2003

Reliant Increases Flexibility and Speed to Market with Mercator Hub

Mercator(TM) Software, Inc. (Nasdaq: MCTR) today announced that the Mercator-based Reliant Energy transactional management system celebrated 15 months of continuous operation.

Using Mercator InsideDataExchange(TM), Reliant built a transactional EDI management system to meet the demands of the newly deregulated electricity market in Texas.

When the deregulated market opened up in January of 2002, it created a unique opportunity for Reliant to compete for new customers, both in the residential and in the commercial and industrial markets as well. Reliant had to build systems to support 1.7 million existing customers and selected Mercator technology to manage the EDI transactions with ERCOT and the respective transmission and distribution providers.

"The project has been very successful, especially considering the magnitude of the challenges associated with taking any system live in a new market. Mercator InsideDataExchange has provided Reliant with an open architecture for managing business processes and transaction flows between Reliant and our trading partners, enabling us to better serve customers in the deregulated environment," stated David Craig, Reliant's director, back-office IT. "The Mercator solution fits well with the Reliant strategy to improve our operational metrics including uptime, timeliness, availability and accountability for our customer transactions."

The Reliant Solution

Reliant has deployed Mercator as the transactional hub for its large retail operation. The hub manages multiple transaction flows between Reliant, its trading partners, and The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), an independent, not-for-profit organization responsible for the reliable transmission of electricity across Texas' interconnected 37,000-mile power grid; as well as other competitive retailers.

Using Mercator, the Reliant hub for EDI transactions was developed, tested and deployed in record time, especially considering the complexity of the transactions and interfaces that Reliant needed to develop.

The Mercator open architecture has helped Reliant to develop an EDI solution, which was highly customized for Texas Set; enabling transaction validation, translation, logging, error handling and reporting functions that met the Reliant and market requirements. In addition, a list of critical executive reports is published on a daily/weekly/monthly basis by the Reliant transactional management system.

Transactions such as consumption data, residential customer enrollments, other services changes and automated payment transactions are processed through the Reliant hub and, taking advantage of Mercator Inside Adapters for SAP and Oracle, transactions are integrated with Reliant's back office applications. In total, the Reliant EDI hub has achieved significant scalability, handling about 2.2 million Inbound/Outbound transactions per week with 99.1% uptime during the past eighteen months.

"Handling high volume, complex data flows is one of the things we do best. Mercator and Mercator InsideDataExchange(TM) is the solution of choice for large and growing enterprises like Reliant," said Mercator Chairman and CEO Roy King. "We are proud that Reliant Energy has achieved such high levels of success and ROI with Mercator."

Mercator InsideDataExchange is a component of Mercator Inside MRD(TM), a suite of Industry-Ready Integration Solutions(TM) that allow manufacturing, retail, and distribution organizations to achieve global supply chain visibility; simplify collaboration; and expedite enlistment of partners and suppliers. Built on Mercator's strong and reliable integration platform, Mercator Inside Integrator(TM), Mercator InsideDataExchange enables standards-based collaboration with trading platforms and partners. It sources data from back-end systems and EDI, and transforms it to standard XML format. It also manages the exchange of information between an enterprise and the trading platform or partners.

About Mercator Software, Inc.

Mercator delivers its customers and partners The Advantage Inside Integration(TM), providing Industry-Ready Integration Solutions(TM) that solve critical business problems in real-time, while leveraging current technology investments and maximizing ROI. Mercator's core integration technology, Mercator Inside Integrator(TM) 6.7, features a Solutions-Oriented Architecture(TM), which easily and seamlessly automates high-volume, complex transactions. Over 1,100 enterprise customers leverage the power, speed and flexibility of Mercator's proven integration technology and industry expertise to build better business value and faster ROI. To hear why our customers and partners believe Mercator is the advantage inside integration, visit our Web site at www.mercator.com

About Reliant Energy

Reliant Energy is the brand name under which Reliant Resources, Inc., based in Houston, Texas, operates. Reliant provides electricity and energy services to retail and wholesale customers in the U.S. and Europe. The company provides a complete suite of energy products and services to approximately 1.7 million electricity customers in Texas ranging from residences and small businesses to large commercial, industrial and institutional customers. Its wholesale business includes approximately 22,000 megawatts of power generation capacity in operation, under construction or under contract in the U.S. The company also has nearly 3,500 megawatts of power generation in operation in Western Europe.

(C) 2003 Mercator Software, Inc. All rights reserved. Mercator and the Mercator logo are registered trademarks of Mercator Software, Inc. All other marks appearing with a "TM" thereafter are intellectual property of Mercator Software, Inc. Any other product or company names mentioned are used for identification purposes only, and may be trademarks or service marks of their respective owners.

Legal Notice Regarding Forward-Looking Statements 

Statements in this press release that are not purely historical are forward-looking statements, including statements regarding Mercator's beliefs, expectations, hopes or intentions regarding the future. Forward-looking statements in this release include, but are not limited to, statements regarding the growth of the enterprise application market; the demand for the Company's application integration solutions; and the speed of deployment of new products, including the Mercator(R) Inside Integrator family of products and Industry-Ready Integration Solutions; and sometimes contain words such as "believe," "expect," "intend," "anticipate," "plan," "estimate" or similar expressions. It is important to note that actual outcomes and the Company's actual results could differ materially from forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially include risks and uncertainties such as changes in demand for application integration or e-business integration software and, in particular, the Company's Mercator(R) Inside Integrator family of products and Industry-Ready Integration Solutions; the ability of the Company to manage its global operations; the ability of the Company to develop and introduce new or enhanced products; the ability of the Company to continue to add resellers and other distribution channels; the success of third parties in utilizing and marketing the Company's products; the success of the vertical industries and platforms we target; the Company's access to and success of third party products in which we embed our products or in which our products are embedded; the Company's ability to raise financing; and seasonality in operating results. Readers should also refer to the risk disclosures outlined in the Company's reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. All forward-looking statements and reasons why results might differ included in this release are made as of the date hereof based on information available to the Company as of the date hereof. The Company assumes no obligation to update any such forward-looking statement or reasons why results might differ.