Vertex, a UK utility business process outsourcer, has received SunTone accreditation for its alto application, a billing system based on Sun Microsystems infrastructure which has been created to meet the specific needs of utility companies.
Sun technology was used to develop the alto application, which is a customer-centric billing and cash and debt management system. In developing the alto application, Vertex replaced two mainframe legacy systems running two legacy applications with the new alto application, SunFire 12k servers and a T3 StorEdge array.
The Sun platform currently hosts the billing component of the alto application, with the data warehousing and other components available to move to the Sun platform in the future. In addition, the Sun platform allows non-technical staff to access the alto application data as the interface requires no coding or programming.
“We chose the Sun infrastructure as it was the most mature platform and environment to run our alto application. We are benefiting from overall reductions in IT infrastructure costs on the new platform whilst increasing efficiency as a direct result of the new technology. The SunTone accreditation sends a message to our customers about the quality of our billing platform,” said Colin Mottershead, alto Product Manager.