Milsoft Interactive Voice Response is a Callisto Stackable Answer

RALEIGH, N.C. and ABILENE, Texas, March 21, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Elster Solutions and Milsoft Utility Solutions announced today that these leading providers of Smart Grid solutions are delivering stackable answers for Elster's Callisto™ grid performance system.

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Callisto helps utilities reduce their risk, reduce the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and achieve the exact functionality desired through its stackable and incremental modularity. The monitoring and notification capabilities built into Callisto are designed for the ease of operation that utilities will want for all of their day-to-day activities.

In addition to the answers built into the Callisto base package, Elster partners such as Milsoft Utility Solutions are pre-integrating best-of breed applications into the suite of Callisto Stackable Answers™. Through its stackable answers, Callisto delivers practical answers to specific problems.

Milsoft's Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems are designed to provide fast, reliable performance in a variety of utility environments, helping utilities effectively manage call loads and handle time-consuming customer interactions. Milsoft IVR display capabilities will be pre-integrated at the Analytics layer of Callisto, giving Milsoft IVR users the added convenience of viewing key IVR information in Callisto.

IVR provides customers with up-to-the-minute outage information including known outage areas; current outage restoration efforts; and estimated time of restoration.

"Elster and Milsoft are both recommended by Hometown Connections to their APPA members," said Andrew Braun, Director of Strategic Alliances, Elster. "It was a natural outgrowth of that endorsement that we would develop a pre-integrated stackable answer that allows utilities to grow their outage management and customer service capabilities in an incremental and cost effective way."

"We have known about Callisto for some time," said Brian Carr, Vice President of Sales and Marketing, Milsoft Utility Solutions. "But after seeing the excitement it generated among the utility attendees at Elster Connect last week, we are very pleased to adding Milsoft IVR capability to the suite of Callisto stackable answers."

Elster's Callisto grid performance system encourages utilities to apply answers at a pace and time that suits them and their budgets. This approach readily assures an attractive TCO, making for a better Return on Investment (ROI) experience.

About Elster

With more 170 years of experience, Elster Solutions has built a reputation on providing cutting-edge technologies to deliver world class products, systems and services to utility clients worldwide. Elster Solutions has three main areas of business – data analytics, Smart Metering and Smart Grid system solutions for electricity, water and gas utilities. Elster Solutions engineers fully interoperable smart metering and data analytics products through custom-made options for utility customers and award-winning end-to-end solutions for the Smart Grid with Callisto, a multi-utility grid performance system (GPS) for water, gas and electricity around the world.

For more information about Elster Solutions, please visit www.stackableanswers.com and follow us on Twitter at www.twitter.com/EnergyAxis.

About Milsoft Utility Solutions, Inc.

The Milsoft team has provided industry leading engineering and operations (E&O) software and peerless customer support to the electric utility industry in the US and abroad for more than 25 years. Milsoft's Engineering & Operations System integrates Engineering Analysis, Outage Management, Geographic Information, Field Engineering and IVR Communications with each other and with a utility's other systems, applications and data to enable the most efficient and effective planning, operation and management of an intelligent grid. Learn more at: www.milsoft.com.

SOURCE Elster Solutions