MetraTech Corp funds research into the impact of flexible IT and billing software across services industries

London, England -- (SBWIRE) -- 03/22/2011 -- MetraTech Corp (http://www.metratech.com/), the innovative telecom billing, SaaS billing and financial services billing solution provider, has announced its sponsorship of a newly published whitepaper. The paper, from leading independent UK-based analyst house, Innovation Observatory, addresses the increasingly pressing issue of how businesses today can respond effectively and efficiently to industry change.

The report finds companies who succeed in fast-moving sectors do so partly by ensuring that, every time they need to change the way their business works, they aren't constrained by what their IT systems allow them to do.

The Innovation Observatory whitepaper looks at examples of how innovative companies have separated their IT systems from underlying business rules and have benefited as a result. Companies cited in the paper include MetraTech customers City of Chicago and the DTCC, which worked with MetraTech to deliver enterprise billing and billing-related customer care services across its global product portfolio.

The paper recommends that companies clearly define their business strategies and think through how their IT strategies will support them. Innovation Observatory advises that companies consider how IT platforms will cope with any strategic changes and then design, build or buy platforms with reusability in mind.

Businesses might also look to sectors outside their own for best practice flexibility, the paper concludes. "Companies can learn from the experiences of others in sectors where there is a fast pace of change in areas such as service innovation, consolidation on both supply and demand sides of a market, and technology improvement," said Danny Dicks, author of the whitepaper and principal consultant, Innovation Observatory. "Thinking about the architecture of critical IT applications makes a big difference to a company's ability to respond effectively."

Complimentary copies of the full paper are available at http://www.metratech.com/.

About MetraTech
Billing solution provider MetraTech Corp. offers a new approach to charging, billing, settlement and customer care enabling organizations to embrace change without compromise. MetraNet, our flagship product, is unique in its ability to automate business processes and business models that address rapidly changing, complex or radical business strategies across any industry for an unlimited number of services.

MetraNet is deployed globally by a diverse customer base, including industry leaders such as City of Chicago-O'Hare, Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation, InterCall, Microsoft Online, PGi (Premiere Global Services), and OnStream (National Grid). From telecom billing to SaaS billing, our customers use MetraNet to build innovative and successful business models, securely collect revenue, and manage their entire customer lifecycle in some 12 languages, 28 currencies and 90 countries. For more information, please visit http://www.metratech.com/.

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Greater London, England -- (SBWIRE) -- 02/11/2011 -- Financial services billing expert MetraTech Corp (http://www.metratech.com/) has announced that it is to provide billing and billing-related services across the entire product portfolio of Latin America's largest central depository for over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives.

MetraTech has been selected by Brazil-based CETIP to deliver a bespoke billing software solution that will enable the OTC clearing organisation to keep pace with the demands of a rapidly evolving and increasingly competitive financial market.

As well as providing a billing solution that will accurately and transparently bill for CETIP's current and future services, MetraTech's MetraNet product will give CETIP the ability to scale its business via new product offerings, channel support and geographic expansion. The billing software will also handle any monetisation aspects of CETIP's service contracts and meet the unique requirements of individual customers, but in a systemic manner - improving speed, traceability and accuracy with less maintenance in the process.

Francisco Carlos Gomes, chief financial officer of CETIP, praised the new billing software, commenting: "We believe that the right billing system is the flexible backbone on which we will continue to build a successful future; one that will enable us to support increasingly complex and varied products and services. In MetraTech, we have found a partner who will meet our needs both immediately and into the future."

"In line with our strategy to assist the world's leading financial services organizations with the modernisation of their billing services, we are delighted that MetraNet has been chosen to support one of the largest infrastructure providers in Latin America," concluded Scott Swartz, chief executive officer of MetraTech, which as well as financial services billing also provides subscription billing and telecom billing solutions. "MetraNet will enable CETIP to face and meet the demands of a rapidly evolving market with confidence."

To learn more about MetraTech and its billing software, go to http://www.metratech.com/.

About MetraTech
MetraTech Corp. offers a new approach to charging, billing, settlement and customer care enabling organisations to embrace change without compromise. MetraNet, the company's flagship billing solution, is unique in its ability to automate business processes and business models that address rapidly changing, complex or radical business strategies across any industry for an unlimited number of services. MetraNet is deployed globally, enabling diverse customers to build innovative and successful business models, securely collect revenue, and manage their entire customer lifecycle in some 12 languages, 26 currencies and 90 countries.

As well as providing everything from telecom billing to Microsoft billing, MetraTech offers a variety of delivery options ranging from licensing to outsourcing. Headquartered in Boston, MetraTech has offices in San Francisco, Munich, Paris, Singapore, Rio de Janeiro and London. MetraTech is a venture-backed, privately held company whose investors include Accel Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners, Meritech Capital, and Vesbridge Partners. For more information, please visit http://www.metratech.com.

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DTCC goes live with enterprise billing system MetraNet across its global product portfolio.

London, England -- (SBWIRE) -- 01/26/2011 -- MetraTech Corp. (http://www.metratech.com/), the customer service and billing system specialist, has announced that the DTCC (Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation) has gone live with its MetraNet billing platform. DTCC has launched MetraNet to ensure effective enterprise billing system across its global operations.

DTCC settled nearly USD1.48 quadrillion in securities transactions through its subsidiaries in 2009. The company provides clearance, settlement and information services in the equities, fixed-income, insurance, over-the-counter derivatives and wealth-management markets throughout the U.S. and overseas.

Billing platform MetraNet will provide a number of critical advantages to DTCC. Its highly flexible architecture enables users to quickly react and adapt to industry change (regardless of vertical), giving DTCC a billing platform from which it can expand and adjust its service offerings. This ability to innovate and grow is key in the fast-paced financial services industry of today.

MetraNet also supports full auditability across all product ranges: an essential function with regulatory requirements increasing and the need for control and transparency paramount. Fundamentally, this means that the billing system ensures timely and concise information is available to every party in the transaction chain - customers, regulators and DTCC itself. DTCC customers in particular benefit from comprehensive online fee analysis as well as being able to configure and manage their account data according to their own preferences and export it to a spreadsheet for further analysis.

"Going live with MetraTech's billing and customer care product is a significant step for our organisation," said Anthony Savarese, managing director, Finance, for DTCC. "We recognize that an enterprise billing solution will be a key asset as we expand our product line, client base and geographic reach, and will allow us to manage our business in an efficient and cost-effective way. MetraNet will help us achieve those goals."

According to Steven Murphy, research director, wholesale banking at independent consultancy Tower Group, DTCC is leading a growing and important trend in the industry. Said Murphy, "Tower Group has recently identified that many major corporate banking institutions are starting implementations of enterprise billing. This is because it is increasingly recognised that an enterprise billing system can both enhance revenues and plug revenue leakage through end-to-end transaction monitoring."

Scott Swartz, chief executive officer of MetraTech Corp., concluded: "We are delighted that MetraNet is supporting one of the world's leading financial services infrastructure providers. Through its unrivalled ability to meet the demands of enterprise billing across multiple industries and regardless of their complexities, MetraNet continues to prove itself to be an asset to those companies on the cutting edge of their markets."

Learn more about the enterprise billing solutions offered by MetraTech at http://www.metratech.com/Billing-Solutions/Enterprise-Billing.aspx.

About MetraTech
MetraTech Corp. offers a new approach to charging, billing, settlement and customer care enabling organizations to embrace change without compromise. MetraNet, its flagship product, is unique in its ability to automate business processes and business models that address rapidly changing, complex or radical business strategies across any industry for an unlimited number of services. MetraNet is deployed globally, enabling diverse customers to build innovative and successful business models, securely collect revenue, and manage their entire customer lifecycle in some 12 languages, 26 currencies and 90 countries. For more information on MetraTech and its billing solutions, visit http://www.metratech.com/.

For more information on this press release visit: http://www.releasewire.com/press-releases/release-3.htm

Billing Experts Examine How Telecoms Can Transform Billing from a Cost Center to a Profit Center

Greater London, England -- (SBWIRE) -- 10/01/2010 -- Innovative telco billing expert MetraTech (http://www.metratech.com) and independent research organisation TNO have linked up to launch a new whitepaper centred around telco billing. Authored by George Huitema, senior strategist at TNO, and Doug Zone, chief technology officer at MetraTech, 'Income-Based Billing: Transforming Billing from Cost Center to Profit Center' is available immediately for download from http://www.metratech.com.

The paper explains that billing can be a powerful means for controlling resource usage and customer satisfaction in telecoms. In examining increasingly prevalent cases of network congestion and the resulting 'crowd-out' effect, the authors conclude that all-you-can-eat subscriptions no longer make sense, as high-value users inevitably get pushed out by the insatiable consumption habits of low-value customers. The result is that every time supply runs out, contention emerges and users perceive that less is being delivered because they have had to spend more time to get the same service.

"Because strategies centred on supply management and extensions to networks are not sustainable long term, managing demand is the better choice," said George Huitema. "Handled with the correct strategy, operators can optimize utilization of existing network capacity and increase revenues while simultaneously meeting current customer demand."

Speaking on behalf of billing solution provider MetraTech, Doug Zone added, "Only with 'demand management' through effective monetary pricing can operators influence consumers to optimise what they get from the network, without allowing any one group of users, or any one type of application, or any one behaviour at peak periods, to 'crowd out' other users.

By segmenting customers according to their relative time and price sensitivities, it is much more likely operators can effectively manage consumption through differential policies that ultimately have a significant impact on behaviours and profits."

The whitepaper draws on the expertise of MetraTech in business modeling, charging, telecom billing, settlement and customer care alongside TNO's knowledge of network issues, customer demands, usage patterns and price elasticity. Together, the two organisations help operators analyse and process network and customer utilization data in the most cost-effective manner possible.

Doug Zone concluded, "The convergence of knowledge around price and time cost elasticities with massively scalable charging and billing will help operators reduce crowding out by time-insensitive users and balance utilization in such a way that it opens capacity for time-sensitive and profitable users."

For more on telecom billing, visit http://metratech.com/Billing-Solutions/Wireline-Billing.aspx

About MetraTech
MetraTech Corp. offers a new approach to charging, billing, settlement and customer care enabling organizations to embrace change without compromise. MetraNet, the company's flagship product, is unique in its ability to automate business processes and business models that address rapidly changing, complex or radical business strategies across any industry for an unlimited number of services. MetraNet is deployed globally, enabling diverse customers to build innovative and successful business models, securely collect revenue, and manage their entire customer lifecycle in some 12 languages, 26 currencies and 90 countries. For more information, please visit http://www.metratech.com.

For more information on this press release visit: http://www.releasewire.com/press-releases/release-3.htm

Greater London, England -- (SBWIRE) -- 08/27/2010 -- Enterprise billing solution specialist MetraTech and business publisher VanillaPlus have launched the second webinar in their four part series 'Billing, Customer Care and the Enterprise Customer – A Different Approach'. The new webinar focuses on how businesses can maintain their billing systems and software to accommodate the ever-changing demands of their customer bases.

'How your billing system can keep up with organizational changes – not yours, but your customer's!' brings together three leading speakers from the billing software industry to discuss, debate and demonstrate best practice in enterprise billing organisation. You can listen to this new billing software webinar right now.

Adrian King and Pradeep Suchdeo, MetraTech's Director of Product Marketing and Technical Business Solutions Manager respectively, were two of the enterprise billing experts in attendance.

They joined forces with Dan Baker, Principal Market Synthesizer and Co-Founder of the Technology Research Institute to cover everything from anchoring the account hierarchy of a corporate customer to how many billing cycles a customer will allow to pass before they demand that their billing solution correctly reflects their new structure.

Amongst the other billing solution topics up for discussion were:

• The fastest and most effective ways to respond to all of your customer's changing billing software requirements
• How a configurable billing platform will strengthen competitive advantage for both you and your customer
• The functional benefits of embracing a Dynamic Business Modelling approach vs. a static solution

The Accenture report of 2008 proved an equally sizeable talking point. The company interviewed 100 customers of billing system providers to find out what they thought of their experience. Key results included 10% of customers admitting that they had moved their enterprise billing to a competitor, 78% feeling that their services and contracts were difficult to understand and 53% indicating that there were inaccuracies in their own bill.

Join Adrian King, Pradeep Suchdeo and Dan Baker to explore how to identify this and other challenges related to keeping up with high-value customers' demands for billing software transparency and flexibility, by listening to this new billing webinar.

The final two MetraTech/VanillaPlus billing platform webinars, 'Responding quickly to the competition with discounts, promotions and bundles' and 'Evolution in your industry – an examination of new business models , including cloud serves and multi-party app stores – and how they impact your billing environment' will take place in September. The first webinar in the series, 'Giving your Customers Control of their Services – A Case Study' is now available on-demand at the MetraTech website.

For more on MetraTech and enterprise billing solutions, go to http://www.metratech.com

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MetraTech, market leader in billing platforms and software, has been chosen by metering solutions company OnStream to deliver the billing solution for its next innovative business development.

London, UK -- (SBWIRE) -- 05/13/2010 -- Billing solution and customer care product provider MetraTech Corp. has been selected by OnStream to deliver the billing software element of its extensive business transformation program.

OnSteam, a National Grid Company, provides gas and electricity metering solutions to energy suppliers across Great Britain. The company will deploy MetraNet, MetraTech's customer care and billing platform, to support both its traditional meters and the roll out of its new smart meter business model in the UK.

"MetraTech's ability to let us adapt our business model in the new world of smart meters and to enable our sales team to implement contracts tailored to our customers needs will help us to create both an efficient and more responsive organization," said Declan McLaughlin, head of transformation, OnStream.

OnStream's transformation program is focused on putting its customers at the heart of the organization to enable the company to become the 'smart metering partner of choice.'

In the highly competitive energy utilities market, it goes without saying that the need to shift to an innovative business model that can enable smart meter deployment across Great Britain is a critical one. This is why OnStream has implemented a transformation program to build smart-ready capability in the business and is establishing fully integrated gas and electricity systems and processes to ensure that the customer is kept at the centre of OnStream's business.

"Smart metering represents the critical pathway for OnStream's future," said Sharon Rodriguez, Director, OnStream. "Being able to leverage this new technology to deliver highly competitive, unique customer offerings is only possible if the infrastructure required to support the resulting contracts is in place. With MetraNet's Dynamic Business Modeling capabilities, we expect to achieve the nimbleness required to face the challenges of an evolving smart metering market."

MetraNet's proven ability to develop innovative and often yet unseen billing solutions and billing platforms across a variety of industries including transportation, telecoms and financial services made it an obvious choice for OnStream. MetraNet will manage the complex billing contracts for the company's customers as well as the payments to its service providers. Both customers and service providers will be able to view and configure their bills online, thus giving far better service and reducing the amount of queries to the company.

"We are delighted to partner with OnStream as they seek to transform their business," said Scott Swartz, Chief Executive Officer of MetraTech, which also specialises in enterprise billing, Microsoft billing and cloud billing. "We are excited by the opportunity to add to MetraNet's proven expertise in bringing new business models to life, already demonstrated across a variety of different industries." For more information on MetraTech and its billing solutions, go to http://www.metratech.com

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Billing solution provider MetraTech has been appointed by Nervogrid as the new billing platform for its fully-managed, secure and performance-guaranteed IT services to businesses.

London, UK -- (SBWIRE) -- 04/27/2010 -- Innovative billing software and customer care product provider MetraTech (http://www.metratech.com) is celebrating a new client in the form of Nervogrid - an Information Technology (IT) service provider for the SME sector. Nervogrid has chosen the market leader's flagship product MetraNet as the billing solution for its Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS) offerings. MetraNet's unique dynamic business modelling-based building system will forge the way for Nervogrid to offer fully-managed, secure and performance-guaranteed IT services to businesses within a range of industries whilst employing a pay-as-you-go model.

"We need to be able to quickly syndicate a wide variety of IT services from a diverse set of vendors and provide our clients a high level of automation in a cost-efficient, pay-as-you-go model," said Aleksi Partanen, Chief Executive Officer of Nervogrid. "Most of the billing solutions we looked at are very rigid and don't come close to providing the flexibility and scalability that our billing platform requires. MetraNet was the only settlement, customer care and billing system that could map into our SOA Service Delivery Platform and dynamically deliver the change management necessary to service our clients both today and over time."

MetraTech's billing software will merge with Nervogrid's DaaS offerings and allow businesses to focus on their core expertise and use the 'cloud' as a virtual IT infrastructure. Clients can outsource the management of business applications, desktop infrastructure services and datacenter services to Nervogrid. All these IT services are centrally-produced and managed in Nervogrid's datacenters and delivered to customers over a network. Services are subscription-based and clients only pay for what they use, whether it is by the number of users, worksites or gigabytes.

"It's exciting to see companies like Nervogrid successfully exploit the power of Cloud Computing," said MetraTech's Scott Swartz, Chief Executive Officer of the subscription and cloud billing expert. "The unparalleled flexibility and elasticity of MetraTech's dynamic business modeling approach is a perfect fit for Nervogrid and other businesses that want to create Cloud Computing and Software-as-a-Service offerings. We are looking forward to working with the Nervogrid team to make their innovative DaaS IT services highly successful."

For more information on MetraTech and its billing solutions, visit http://www.metratech.com

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London, UK -- (SBWIRE) -- 03/02/2010 -- MetraTech Corp., the innovative charging, billing, settlement and customer care product provider, today announced the results of a performance benchmark of its MetraNet® billing software running on Microsoft SQL Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 and deployed on HP ProLiant servers. The benchmark simulated 60 million active corporate subscribers, with 5 accounts each, consuming granular, high-volume service offerings. The results demonstrate exceptional end-to-end transaction throughput, as follows:

- Rating / Pricing - 84,781 usage records/second, with each record inserted into an indexed database
- Billing - 669 bills/second, with an average of 300 events per bill
- Balance Updates – 1.2 billion/hour, including event de-duplication, with each event updating an existing balance in an indexed database.

The study was based on requirements for continuously metered, cloud computing services spanning IaaS, PaaS and SaaS billing offerings. The testing was run in a simulated production-level environment at an HP Solution Center. The scale-up environment utilized 19 HP ProLiant DL380G6 servers, an HP ProLiant DL580G6 server, an HP ProLiant DL785G6 as the database server and an HP StorageWorks XP24000 Disk Array with 640 drives running MetraNet 6.05.1, Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 and SQL Server 2008 SP1. The database contained 300 million accounts (arranged under 60 million subscribers with 5 sub-accounts each), 40 billion usage events and production-level database indexes. HP also performed independent verification of the testing results above through re-performance on a sample basis.

The findings demonstrate that MetraTech's billing system, already known for its exceptional flexibility, scales to high volumes while managing continuous and highly granular services. The conclusions of this end-to-end revenue management benchmark demonstrate that the critical billing requirements of industries with dynamically evolving business models including Cloud, Smart Grid, Financial Services, Media & Entertainment and Telco, can be fully supported by the Microsoft server platform deployed on cost-effective HP hardware. "In the highly competitive Cloud, Telco, Energy and Financial Services industries, businesses are challenged to cost-effectively monetize high-volume services delivered via evolving and dynamic business models," said Scott Swartz, chief executive officer, MetraTech Corp. "MetraNet, deployed using Microsoft software, provides a robust option for these organizations."

"Now, more than ever, service providers are operating under competitive pressures and need to find new ways to offer value added services to their subscribers more quickly. As a result, demand is increasing for flexible billing platforms able to support a high volume of customers and a new level of complexity demanded by today's changing business models," said Terry McGuigan, managing director, telecommunications industry, Communications Sector at Microsoft Corp. "In this benchmark, MetraTech has proven that its billing solution can support next-generation services and meet the requirements of the most demanding telecom billing environments."

For more information, just visit http://www.metratech.com

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Billing solution specialist MetraTech awarded high rating in the Gartner BSS Report for the second year running.

London, UK -- (SBWIRE) -- 02/09/2010 -- MetraTech Corp., the innovative charging, billing, settlement and customer care product provider, has been awarded a "strong" rating by leading technology research and advisory company Gartner in its Dataquest Insight: Business Support System Market Overview and Strategic Scorecard for Vendors, 2009 report. This is the second year running that the Microsoft billing specialist has earned acclaim in the Gartner BSS report.

The accolade is based upon an extensive survey of telecom operations and management systems and includes an analysis of 12 vendors. MetraTech and its billing software product MetraNet achieved a "strong" overall rating and also scored "strong" in several categories, namely product strategy, sales strategy, product and service, market understanding, and market responsiveness and track record.

MetraNet's unique aptitude for dynamically modelling business processes and financial models enables customers to meet business goals in a variety of areas, such as telecom billing, cloud computing/SaaS billing, municipalities, financial services, transportation and more. As a result, companies gain significant improvements in processes such as billing management, settlement and customer care while cost-effectively meeting tight deadlines.

"We believe Gartner's continued strong rating reflects the growing awareness of our unique value proposition and momentum in the market," said Scott Swartz, chief executive officer, MetraTech Corp. "Evidenced by a number of significant new customers last year, MetraNet is increasingly becoming the billing solution of choice for companies that need to address the enterprise billing and customer care challenges created by rapidly changing business models in a variety of industries."

For more information on this press release visit: http://www.releasewire.com/press-releases/release-3.htm

Waltham, MA and London, UK -- (SBWIRE) -- 01/13/2010 -- MetraTech Corp., the innovative charging, billing, settlement and customer care product provider has today moved into its new corporate headquarters. The move is a direct result of the company's recent successes in the market which, in turn, has resulted in a significantly increased headcount. As a result, MetraTech had outgrown its old space.

The new headquarters remains in Waltham, MA along Boston's Route 128 technology corridor, enabling MetraTech to continue recruiting from a hotbed of the world's leading Universities. The work environment is significantly larger with improved facilities for staff, customers, and partners, including an upgraded training area. This will enable MetraTech to better serve its clients.

Said Scott Swartz, chief executive officer, MetraTech Corp., "our new building is a visible milestone of MetraTech's progress at the end of what has been one of the most exciting years in the company's history. Our staff, partners, and clients will all benefit from a move which represents another step in our growth."

The address of the new headquarters is:
200 West Drive
Waltham, MA 02451
USA

MetraTech's phone and fax numbers have not changed.

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