Information Builders Business Intelligence Ignites Energy Sector

Upstream Professionals Alliance and Customer Successes Demonstrate Rising Value of High-Octane BI


NEW YORK, NY--(Marketwire - February 14, 2008) - Information Builders, the leading provider of operational business intelligence (BI) software, today announced a strategic alliance with Upstream Professionals Inc. (UPI), a consulting company that implements a Well Life-Cycle Efficiency Framework and Methodology for oil and gas companies. Leveraging Information Builders WebFOCUS BI platform, the partnership will offer a Well Life-Cycle Management (WLCM) reporting tool to optimize operations productivity for oil and gas companies.

The oil and gas industry has taken on a major initiative, focusing on systems and services that continuously monitor and streamline operational resources with capabilities to provide immediate, accurate, and integrated information for informed decision-making. Using WebFOCUS, UPI will be able to provide a Web-based front-end to analyze oil field asset metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs).

"UPI's vast experience in upstream oil and gas, coupled with the rich reporting and visualization capabilities of WebFOCUS, will transform data, workflows, processes, and integration information into useable knowledge environments that foster operational efficiencies from pre-drill to production," said Gerald Cohen, CEO and founder of Information Builders.

"Our alliance with Information Builders gives us the tools to discover significant cost savings and revenue enhancement opportunities within our clients' WLCM," said Jeff Dyk, UPI CEO. "Organizations can now quickly understand and manage their oil field assets, increasing productivity and control costs by fully leveraging the Information Builders platform."

Information Builders has a large roster of customers in the energy sector, including Edison Mission Group, Hunt Petro, Hydro-Quebec, Northwest Natural Gas, Orange & Rockland Utilities, Petro-Canada, Power & Telephone Supply Co., Inc., Valero Energy Corp., and Westcoast Energy Inc. This new combined solution will enable energy industry customers to apply:

-- Workflow to their Well Life-Cycle processes for meaningful information flow-through for better decision-making, analysis, and to trigger events and alerts.

-- Integrated data from multiple, disparate sources across the organization.

-- KPI-driven dashboards to monitor oil field assets, business processes, and information flow for changes in performance and to quickly drill down to problem areas.

-- Analytics for high-impact trends and patterns in operations.

-- Performance achievement based on goals and objectives.

-- Robust reporting capabilities that let users easily retrieve data in the format they need, including complete financial reporting such as income statements, balance sheets, profit and loss, query and analysis, and extensive output such as graphing and charting, Excel, pivot table, XML, PDF, and more.

-- Accounting data for financial insight into daily operations.

The joint Information Builders/Upstream solution will significantly increase operations productivity, control costs, and increase revenues for oil and gas companies.

About Upstream Professionals

Upstream Professionals utilizes a Well Life-Cycle Decision Framework (WLCDF) methodology in delivering solutions. Focusing on the upstream value chain from Exploration to Abandonment, this approach evaluates how all upstream related activity and projects contribute to the profitability of the exploration and production organization. Upstream Professionals is headquartered in Houston, Texas, and additional information is available at www.upstreamprofessionals.com.

About Information Builders

Information Builders award-winning combination of business intelligence and enterprise integration software has been providing innovative solutions to more than 12,000 customers for the past 30 years. WebFOCUS is the world's most widely utilized business intelligence platform. It provides the security, scalability, and flexibility needed at every level of global extended enterprises. Its simplicity helps create executive, analytical, and operational applications that reach dozens to millions of users. Information Builders iWay Software suite provides state-of-the-art, multi-purpose, pre-built integration components that address all SOA, application, data, and information management requirements. Its integration adapters have been adopted by the leading software platform providers. Together, these products give Information Builders customers the ability to live up to the company motto: "Your Business. No Barriers."

Information Builders award-winning technology has successfully provided quality software and superior services to more than 12,000 customers, including most of the Fortune 100 and U.S. federal government agencies. Headquartered in New York City with 90 offices worldwide, the company employs 1,450 people and has more than 350 business partners. For more information visit http://www.informationbuilders.com.

Contact Information: Press Contacts: Kathleen Moran Information Builders (212) 736-4433 Stephanie Fallon Emerge PR (617) 729-3176