Austin invests in billing system as foundation for green energy initiatives

Over the course of the next eight years, the city of Austin will rely on IBM to install and manage a new billing system to support a range of basic utility services including energy, water and waste collection.

The architecture for the project is open, which means it can pull in information from the various systems used already to manage various functions across the local government. It will also support smart meter technology that the city plans to start installing between now and the end of 2009. The goal is for the new billing system to provide a single point of contact for both city employees and local businesses and residents. That way, everyone hopefully will be on the same page as far as publicly available information.

The actual software and middleware that's part of the rollout will include IBM Tivoli, IBM WebSphere and Oracle Customer Care and Billing 2.2. The initiative falls out of the strategy and objectives of the Pecan Street Project, which is dedicated to encouraging clean energy development projects in the Austin region.

This post was originally published on Smartplanet.com