webMethods Inc. announced that it has extended its global partnership with Wipro Technologies. Under the expanded alliance, the two companies will work together to develop new solutions using webMethods' flagship product suite, webMethods Fabric. The initiative initially targets the unique business process requirements of the energy and utilities sector, where both companies claim to offer demonstrated strengths.

"webMethods and Wipro have been working on a global basis with energy and utilities industry leaders and innovators alike to deliver additional efficiency and enhanced control over their operations," said Vivek Bhasin, vice president, eBusiness and Business Intelligence, Wipro Technologies. "webMethods Fabric adds a robust and proven platform for capturing and packaging our best practices, which can then be easily redeployed on a customized basis across multiple implementations for maximum efficiency."

webMethods Fabric delivers within an industry-leading service-oriented architecture (SOA) an array of tools for integrating disparate systems and trading partner networks; managing complex business processes; and proactively monitoring service levels from both an IT and business perspective with predictive analytics helping users anticipate and respond to real-time change.

As just one example, Wipro is using webMethods Fabric to help the UK's Northern Gas Networks meet, within an aggressive 18 month timeframe, the regulatory requirements associated with its divestiture from the National Grid. Through the use of this more flexible and adaptive application infrastructure, Northern Gas Networks is able to rearchitect existing applications and systems to operate independently without disrupting existing operations or processes. Wipro is also leveraging the webMethods platform to consolidate and retire numerous legacy systems as a means for improving cost-effectiveness, operating performance and reliability, and business agility.

Building upon similar experiences throughout the energy and utilities sector, webMethods and Wipro expect to jointly develop a number of new solutions for this market. In doing so, they will draw upon their demonstrated expertise with a number of key processes and operations, including outage management, energy trading and settlement, asset lifecycle management, customer self-service, supply/value chain operations, and store-level integration as an enabler of vendor-managed inventory and automated replenishment.

Wipro and webMethods will also continue to leverage their industry-leading technologies and methodologies to simplify service-oriented architectures (SOA) adoption as a means for improving IT performance and business responsiveness. SOA is of particular value to energy companies and utilities due to their dependence on very dynamic and transitory markets, their exposure to high levels of regulation, and their unwavering need to meet mission-critical standards for performance and reliability.

"Like all businesses, the energy and utilities industries have long recognized the need for operational efficiency, process adaptability, and enhanced speed-to-market. What complicates their quest is their ever-present need to maintain unquestioned predictability, control and fault-free performance over their operations as well," said Arnold Huffman, senior vice president, Business Development and Industry Solutions, webMethods. "Leveraging the global reach and significant expertise of Wipro as well as the unique capabilities offered by webMethods Fabric, we can create targeted solutions for institutionalizing industry best practices within these organization's end-to-end business processes. Through the use of SOA to enable the expanded reuse of these processes, we can also deliver greater consistency, performance and cost-effectiveness."

In addition to jointly developing new solutions for the energy and utilities sectors, the two companies will continue to work together to create common implementation methodologies and shared best practices spanning a number of additional industries, including retail, healthcare and telecommunications. With the companies sharing customers across North America, Europe and Asia Pacific, this approach aims to allow each company to more seamlessly and cost-effectively service customer requirements using the most appropriate professional services resources.