Billing provider adopts IBM virtual servers
The Brisbane headquartered company will have its Peace 8 (Multibill's billing system), Oracle and Formfill applications hosted by IBM's data centre in Sydney's north west as part of a five-year deal.
In the same way it charges utilities and government agencies a per-usage fee for its billing services, Multibill will pay IBM based on the number of customer bills processed.
The companies would not disclose the baseline value of the contract, but Jacqueline Clarke, chief executive officer of MultiBill, said it was worth well over AU$5million.
Clarke also said about half a dozen vendors' data centre offerings were considered before choosing IBM.
The new arrangement allowed many utility customers the chance to bypass an expensive overhaul of billing systems spurred by the deregulation of the energy market, she said.
"We can charge them through their operating budget, we own the software, and they effectively rent it from us."
IBM will also install back-office servers for Multibill, and IP telephony based on Cisco's Call Manager and Unity platform.
MutiBill is upgrading its existing inbound call centre to about 50 seats, according to Clarke.