International Business Machines Corp. announced the Fukuoka District Waterworks Agency will use IBM software for a new system designed to increase the availability of usable water supply and improve water quality across eight cities, eight towns and Kasuga-Nakagawa Waterworks Agency in Japan. The demand for water in urban areas in Fukuoka, which has scarce water resources, continues to increase year by year due to trends in population centralization and increased urbanization. The agency provides municipal water services that include transporting water from the Chikugo River to the Ushikubi water treatment plant, which purifies water for drinking and distributes water to reservoirs in eight cities, eight towns and Kasuga-Nakagawa Waterworks Agency. The agency also manages the Seawater Desalination Plant, which serves a population of 2.3 million residents in the surrounding urban areas. With the support of Nihon-Suiko, an engineering consulting firm, Fukuoka District Waterworks Agency is developing an asset management system based on IBM Maximo software. The system, scheduled to go live in April 2010, will monitor the conditions of facilities assets at the water treatment plant and the Seawater Desalination Center. Assets include electric equipment, engineering and construction devices, pipelines and water pumps. Exa, an IBM Business Partner, implemented the system. IBM's smarter water management system gives Fukuoka District Waterworks greater visibility into their maintenance operations and physical infrastructure, with near real-time status of equipment and maintenance history.

International Business Machines Corp. announced the Lower Colorado River Authority is using IBM software to reduce the complexity and costs of managing the utility's resources and services, which span across more than 36,800 square miles and 58 counties in Central and South Texas, serving more than 2.2 million residents. The IBM software gives LCRA's maintenance and operations staff a bird's-eye view of the assets across the utility so they can address issues before outages occur, and the software helps to accurately predict resource needs as the utility continues to grow and gain new customers.

Kingland Systems Corporation announced that it will embed International Business Machines Corp.'s InfoSphere Master Data Management Server and other IBM software into its 360 Data(TM) line of enterprise data management solutions for the financial services industry through an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) agreement with IBM. This agreement marks an expansion of Kingland's relationship with IBM, focusing on worldwide Master Data Management (MDM) software and data solutions, optimized for large financial services institutions. Kingland's 360 DataTM includes two types of outsourced reference data solutions, 360 Data Master File and 360 Data Reference Desk. 360 Data Master File is a managed data solution that provides clients with a highly accurate database of business entities, securities, complex relationships, events and other types of financial services data. This master file is managed with client-specific business rules and includes a concordance to multiple industry and client-specific identifiers, and can be provided via file or web services. Kingland will also be launching a new financial services optimized MDM platform in 360 Data Enterprise Hub. Developed using IBM's InfoSphere Master Data Management Server, 360 Data Enterprise Hub will provide financial institutions with industry specific data domains, feed handlers, business process and data management workflows, user interfaces, data maintenance and quality processes that are all optimized to support the wide variety of data critical to large banking, capital markets, and other financial services firms.