Echelon and EDMI Announce Market Expansion for Intelligent Electricity Metering to the Australian and Asian Markets with Signing of NES Value Added Reseller Agreement(San Jose, CA, USA and SINGAPORE – December 10, 2003) - Echelon Corporation (NASDAQ: ELON) announced today that EDMI Limited (SGX:EDMI) has entered into an agreement to become a Value-Added Reseller (VAR) of Echelon's Networked Energy Services (NES) intelligent electricity metering system. Headquartered in Singapore with research and development operations in Australia, EDMI provides electronic revenue meters to utilities in markets in Australia, Asia, ASEAN, the Middle East, and Europe. Echelon's NES system provides an open, bidirectional, and extensible infrastructure that enables a comprehensive range of utility applications that can bring benefits to every aspect of a utility's operation, from metering, to customer services, to distribution operations, to value-added services. "We believe that as the utility industry continues to undergo deregulation worldwide, and in the light of heightened market competition and technological advancements, there is an increasing demand for electronic metering systems with more advanced features," said Mr. Lee Kwang Mong , EDMI's managing director. "Echelon's NES system provides us the reliable, cost-effective meter-to-operations center infrastructure needed for us to capitalize on this extremely large, global growth opportunity. By building our new offerings on the NES system, we can extend our business well beyond microprocessor-based electronic revenue meters and offer our utility customers a richer and more cost-effective system that enables them to realize significant cost savings, efficiency gains, and revenue enhancements." "We believe that EDMI's experience in deploying electronic meters in many countries, their strong relationships with utilities, and their expertise in the nuances of regional regulatory compliance position them to be become a leading supplier of NES based solutions to utilities not only in Australia and Asia, but in a rapidly growing worldwide market for intelligent metering systems," said Mr. Ken Oshman, Echelon's chairman and CEO. "We are very pleased to have EDMI join the NES VAR program and to their commitment to bring utilities standards-based intelligent metering solutions built on the NES system." The NES VAR program is designed to establish Echelon's NES system as a global standard for intelligent metering systems by enabling companies that provide products and services to the utility industry to adopt and adapt the NES infrastructure as the basis for their end-to-end metering solutions sold under the NES Powered by EchelonT branding program. It creates an opportunity for companies to offer high-value project management and installation services, software applications, new services such as outsourced meter reading, and meters customized for local market needs -built upon a highly reliable, highly functional network infrastructure consisting of enterprise software based on the Echelon's PanoramixT enterprise software platform, powerful IP connected data concentrators, and a family of intelligent, communicating electricity meter boards that can be built into customized meters by the VAR. About
EDMI EDMI's has manufacturing and engineering operation located in Singapore with research and developments operations based in Australia. EDMI's meters are exported to more than 14 countries located in Asia, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Australasia, the Middle East, and Europe . EDMI's wholly owned subsidiaries in Australia and Malaysia serve as localized regional service support centers. More information about EDMI can be found at http://www.edmi-meters.com. About Echelon ### Echelon, LonWorks, and the Echelon logo are trademarks of Echelon Corporation registered in the United States and other countries. Panoramix and NES Powered by Echelon are trademarks of Echelon Corporation in the US and other countries. Other marks belong to their respective companies. This press release may contain statements relating to future plans, events or performance. Such statements may involve risks and uncertainties, including risks associated with uncertainties pertaining to the timing and level of customer orders, demand for products and services, development of markets for Echelon's products and services, including Echelon's Networked Energy Services (NES) system; risks associated with market acceptance of the NES system, the NES system's ability to perform as designed and its pricing relative to alternative offerings, potential production or shipment delays of NES components to EDMI by Echelon or its production partners, the growth of the LonWorks industry worldwide, sales targets not being met, development of markets for Echelon's products and services, demand for Echelon's products and services; risks associated with EDMI meeting production and delivery targets for NES based solutions, integration of existing EDMI applications with the NES system, demand for EDMI NES based solutions; and other risks identified in Echelon's SEC filings. Actual results, events and performance may differ materially. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date hereof. Echelon undertakes no obligation to release publicly the result of any revisions to these forward-looking statements that may be made to reflect events or circumstances after the date hereof or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events. Contact Information
|
||||||||