Barco : 31 January 2017 OBI Partners and Barco partner to deliver turnkey Operational Business Intelligence visualization solutions that enhance real-time decision-making experiences for Utilities

Forward-thinking utilities are continuously seeking solutions that enhance knowledge and improve mission-critical decision making in their Transmission and Distribution (T&D) operational space. OBI has played an integral role in their success by providing operational business intelligence solutions, services and consulting to optimize network operations, service reliability and restoration performance.

Barco delivers collaborative visualization solutions that empower control room operators with real-time situational awareness. Its X2O technology will be embedded into OBI Partners' software products to enhance data visualization in various ways, tailored to a customer's specific needs. As a recognized standard web technology, the HTML5 design of X2O increases speed to market of OBI's solutions.

'Our focus has been to supply utilities with industry-leading solutions that enable them to make accurate, proactive decisions based on near real-time data. With the availability of information and technology, utilities customers now expect and demand service as well as answers to their questions,' comments Ray Kasten, President of OBI Partners 'We are delighted to partner with Barco, as their X2O visualization technology is industry leading and greatly simplifies go to market development times.'

Barco's X2O platform is a powerful HTML5-based platform designed to improve communication channels, providing critical and real-time information that can then be immediately acted upon. It features intuitive tools for content generation and distribution to bring relevant information to the different stakeholders (internal and external) using standard web technologies. X2O presents data in a graphical form that is easy to interpret and also offers interactivity for immediate action or collaboration.

'OBI Partners is led by a group of outstanding professionals with decades of operational experience within the utilities space and Barco is fortunate to team with them to serve the Utilities industry,' comments Hans Dekeyser, VP Strategic Marketing Industrial & Government. 'This agreement enables Barco to better serve the industry with a full suite of visualization solutions, including X2O visualization technology but also through its new platform designed to increase operator efficiency, OpSpace. With our combined offering, the entire utility corporation - from the executive leadership to field operators - can now enjoy a modern state-of-the-art, real-time view of operations.'

About OBI Partners

OBI Partners provides packaged advance business intelligence solutions focused on the utilities industry. The OBI solution leverages utilities' growing operational data collecting capabilities in order to provide real-time 'actionable intelligence' resulting in increased reliability, lower cost of operations, and improved customer communication and satisfaction.

OBI Partners' past experience includes successful deployments of Operational Business Intelligence Solutions within electric and gas distribution companies as well as power generation, ranging from Hydro to Nuclear. Some of the past customer deployments of OBI Partners include: Southern Company, ConEdison of New York, Exelon, Northern Ireland Electric, and Colorado Springs Utilities, amongst others.Further information can be found at www.OBIpartners.com.

About Barco
Barco, a global technology company, designs and develops networked visualization products for the Entertainment, Enterprise and Healthcare markets. Barco has its own facilities for Sales & Marketing, Customer Support, R&D and Manufacturing in Europe, North America and APAC. Barco (NYSE Euronext Brussels: BAR) is active in more than 90 countries with 3,300 employees worldwide. Barco posted sales of 1.029 billion euro in 2015.

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