Wipro Technologies Delivers Integrated Work and Asset Management System for Northern Gas Networks in Record Time.

BANGALORE, India -- Wipro Technologies, the global IT services business of Wipro Limited (NYSE:WIT) today announced the successful delivery in record time of an Integrated Work and Asset Management system for Northern Gas Networks Ltd (NGN).

Basil Scarsella, CEO, Northern Gas Networks Limited, said, "By implementing the new work and asset management system, NGN has established a strong foundation for achieving operational efficiencies, the integration of future acquisitions and a template that can be re-used by new networks, optimising the investment to-date and setting industry best practice."

Tamal Das Gupta, Senior Vice President, Energy & Utilities, Wipro Technologies said, "We have delivered a new integrated work and asset management system on time, to budget and with the highest quality standards. The new system allowed NGN to operate their gas network independently from National Grid, ahead of the service agreement expiry date and avoiding severe financial penalties. It has demonstrated the capabilities of Wipro to implement complex systems for utility companies."

Following the sale of four of the regional gas networks in the United Kingdom in June 2005, NGN had a service agreement with National Grid that granted them access to the existing National Grid systems for a period of 18 months only. NGN is responsible for transportation of gas in the North of England via 36,000Km of pipelines, covering around 6.7 million inhabitants and servicing 2.5 million customers; it was critical to the NGN business that it had its own Work and Asset Management systems operating by 30 November 2006. NGN appointed Wipro Technologies as the system integrator with complete responsibility to implement its new front office work and asset management system, to ensure that it was built to time and budget, and to ensure that the asset operator (United Utilities Operations Limited) could continue to operate the gas distribution network without interruption.

John Hunter, IT Director, Northern Gas Networks said "This has been another magnificent effort by Wipro. The programme team's speed and quality of implementation, in my opinion, is unparalleled in European Utilities Computing."

Wipro was the prime service provider to NGN in delivering programme management, system integration, vendor management, solution delivery, business change, communication and testing services. Wipro's solution is helping NGN to have visibility of costs at work order level, improve the management of the asset base, and facilitate a wiser use of asset information to support management decisions and future investment strategies, thereby allowing earlier and superior returns on the investment. The solution is compliant with all legal and regulatory requirements, and maintains and supports network integrity and safety, securing and enhancing the distribution network asset value.

At the core of the solution developed by Wipro was SAP's Enterprise Asset Management solution that managed the work and asset management process supporting Network Maintenance, Repair, Replace, Projects, Emergency and Metering business processes. Additionally, the Advantex product suite from Indus/MDSI delivered functionality for scheduling, dispatch and field force automation while ESRI's ArcGIS in conjunction with Telvent Miner and Miner's ArcFM products provided enterprise-wide GIS functionality. A number of specialist applications that were related to network analysis, risk management and pipeline integrity systems complemented the solution. WebMethods was used as the integration platform for all the systems including external systems that were outside the boundary of NGN. The complete solution was built upon Sun's infrastructure hosted from remote data centres.

About Northern Gas Networks Limited

Northern Gas Networks Limited is the owner of the gas distribution system in the North of England, an area covering the North East, West, East and North Yorkshire, and northern Cumbria.

Its assets are valued at [pounds sterling]1.7 billion, which consist of 36,000 km of gas mains, 48 gasholders and five high pressure storage sites, which combined fuel the energy needs of 2.5 million consumers.

Northern Gas Networks, whose head office is in Leeds, is one of the largest businesses in the region. It has chosen to operate to a strategic asset management model, separating its asset ownership responsibilities from the delivery of operational activity.

This means Northern Gas Networks retains and is accountable for all the obligations and responsibilities required by its Licence To Operate.

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