Hong Kong SAR, Peoples Republic of China/ Vienna - 13 January 2006 - Center for E-Commerce Infrastructure Development (CECID), The University of Hong Kong (HKU) and enerbility software gmbh of Vienna, Austria, are pleased to announce that the open source ebXML message service handler, Hermes, has been integrated in the electronic confirmation matching system enerbility 2.0.

enerbility 2.0 is the second generation of an ECM-system developed for the over-the-counter trading in the European energy industry. It is in use at major energy trading companies in Europe like E.ON, ATEL, Statkraft and APT.

enerbility focuses on the integration of best-of-breed third-party components into and around its transactional XML exchange and processing technology. To comply with the industry demand for ebXML, enerbility went for Hermes. In the selection process almost all available ebXML products have been evaluated and a selected subset has been tested.

Martin Schimak, the engineer evaluating the products, states: "In our evaluation process, we've considered all relevant aspects to find the best product concerning cost-performance ratio. We chose Hermes and are very satisfied with its stability and performance."

Hannes Stiebitzhofer, CEO of enerbility software gmbh, adds:"The reliability of Hermes - besides its ebXML MS 2.0 compliance as tested by ebXML Asia Committee - is a perfect complement to enerbility, running without any incidents for months."

CECID is happy about Hermes' first production use in the European energy trading market. "This is very encouraging to all of us. enerbility has demonstrated the use of Hermes in a 'raw material' supply chain. Without the support of our funding agency, the Innovation and Technology Commission of Hong Kong, we couldn't have developed Hermes. On the other hand, today's Hermes is also the result of contribution by developers in the open-source community around the world. I'm very pleased to see Hermes being chosen as the messaging gateway to facilitate the energy sector," says Dr. David Cheung, Director of CECID.

Thomas Lee, CTO of CECID, also responds positively to enerbility's decision. "enerbility is an innovative and fast-moving company. We are proud that Hermes, an open-source project that has been downloaded by 80+ economies, is able to meet enerbility's stringent requirements for performance and scalability in terms of handling a large number of messages reliably and securely."

About enerbility software gmbh (www.enerbility.com)
enerbility software gmbh is a dynamic flexible Vienna-based company which emerged from a pilot project for the development of an Electronic Confirmation Matching Systems (ECM) based on the EFET (European Federation of Energy Traders) Standard. enerbility software gmbh was founded in Spring 2004 and is focused on software development and consultancy for the energy sector.

About CECID (www.cecid.hku.hk)
Established in January 2002, the Center for E-Commerce Infrastructure Development (CECID) at the University of Hong Kong conducts e-commerce research and development with the vision of helping organizations increase their competitiveness in the global economy. CECID develops e-commerce enabling technologies, participates in important international e-commerce initiatives, supports e-commerce standardization for Hong Kong and the Asia Pacific Region, and transfers e-commerce technology and skills to the community. With projects primarily funded by the Hong Kong Government's Innovation and Technology Commission, CECID is an active member of OASIS and the ebXML Asia Committee. The Center also collaborates with a number of lead technology users in the Asia-Pacific Region on turning R&D results into real-life business applications. CECID's contributions to the community include its code donation of Hermes and ebMail to freebXML (http://www.freebxml.org) and the production of an in-depth design and management guide on XML Schemas for the Hong Kong Government.

PR Contacts for Press and Analysts
Dorris Tai (cwtai@cecid.hku.hk)
Business Manager
Center for E-Commerce Infrastructure Development (CECID)
Dept. of Computer Science
The University of Hong Kong
Tel: +852 2859 2818
Fax: +852 2547 4611
URL: http://www.cecid.hku.hk