Elevate Deploys Cloud Based Billing System From Zuora to Expand Services to 100,000 Households

REDWOOD CITY, CA--(Marketwire - Jul 26, 2011) -

Summary

• Zuora, the subscription billing and commerce leader, today announced that Elevate Inc, a premier digital services provider with an array of IP and wireless residential services, is using Zuora's subscription commerce platform to rapidly roll out its innovative subscription services across the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico.
• Elevate offers literally hundreds of configurations of residential services tailored to the needs of each individual residential customer, including broadband service up to 10 mbps; IP-based TV and satellite TV service offered in cooperation with DirecTV™ and DISH Network™; mobile and digital phone services; and a fully integrated suite of home security and automation services.
• Elevate represents the new breed of communications provider, revolutionizing the market by delivering flexible service bundles at lower prices with superior customer service. The key to this strategy is speed and flexibility, and with the Zuora for Communications cloud billing platform, Elevate can execute at a more rapid clip than competitors who are held back by decades old, on-premise technology.

Speed-to-Market and Innovative Services are Key to Unseating Incumbent Communications Service Providers

• The communications and residential services markets are undergoing rapid growth and change. Consumers are demanding more than voice and data plans, and CSP's need to respond with innovative service offerings and bundled options. But legacy billing solutions are frequently too slow, too inflexible and too costly to adapt to this new reality. Cloud computing solutions offer a path to success in this new reality.
• Elevate saw the opportunity to outflank incumbent service providers by delivering the right bundles to the right customers at the right price, coupled with superior customer service. To do so, Elevate needed to operate with more scalability, flexibility and speed than its original home-grown subscription management application could provide. Traditional billing systems were simply not an option to give Elevate's time-to-market and flexibility requirements.
• Elevate turned to the Zuora for Communications cloud-based billing and subscription management platform and was able to implement in just 60 days.
• The company can now roll out a new range of services offerings on-the-fly, enabling the heart of its business strategy and competitive differentiation, while helping the company scale its operations rapidly.
• Elevate has aggressive expansion plans to provide market coverage for more than 100,000 households in 22 markets by the end of 2012. To do so, Elevate is opening 2 - 3 new offices every 6 - 10 weeks.

Elevate uses the cloud to enable on-the-fly service provisioning and rapid expansion

• Elevate deploys more than 1,000 Elevate Professors, Geniuses and Certified Nerds that need the ability to create and rapidly deploy custom solutions for each subscriber. The Zuora solution lets agents easily price, quote, and take orders on the front end and enables Elevate to manage and monetize subscribers on the back end. With Zuora, agents can easily modify services to meet evolving needs, even as Elevate's subscriber base grows at 20 - 25 percent per year.
• Zuora for Communications is playing a critical role in Elevate's aggressive expansion plans. With Zuora, Elevate's marketing team can create and deploy specific pricing and packaging configurations in minutes to address unique market requirements. This ability to efficiently manage an unlimited number of packages is the key to Elevate's competitive advantage as it takes on more rigid, less customer-oriented service providers.

Commentary

• "Our business is based on the proposition of giving our customers exactly what they need for the best possible value, rather than limiting them to inflexible, impersonal service that many of us have come to expect from legacy service providers," said Bryan Ferre, Chief Marketing Officer, Elevate. "From the beginning, Zuora was part of our launch plans because of the clear competitive advantage it gives Elevate. If I want to launch 20 new products or packages tomorrow, I can. Our competitors with older on-premise technology simply cannot keep pace."
• "It's clear that the time for cloud billing has arrived. Communications consumers' fully expect fast, flexible, customized service offerings," said Shawn Price, President of Zuora. "Elevate is the first telecom service provider to launch a business based on meeting this expectation, demonstrating how the commerce subscription capabilities of Zuora for Communications can truly change the game for telecom providers and their customers."

About Elevate
Elevate, Inc. (OTCBB: HGLB) is the only publicly traded Digital Services provider that is meeting customer demand for affordability, variety, and service by leveraging a network of independent, licensed connectivity specialists to sell and service the residential and small business data, voice, video, mobile and security markets.

Through its carrier-level agreements with many of the nation's major infrastructure providers, Elevate, Inc. is able to offer technologically agnostic product 'Stacks' -- product configurations that aren't limited to a single delivery infrastructure. Elevate Certifiable Geniuses can choose component products from among all locally available carriers or infrastructure technologies to create cost-effective, custom product packages that meet the unique needs of each of their customers. Independent Elevate owners bring made-to-order digital services to their local communities, one living room at a time.

About Zuora, Inc.
Zuora's subscription billing and commerce platform changes the way subscription businesses manage and sell to customers, allowing them to bring new products to market in less time, with more flexibility and less hassle. Zuora customers are up and running within 90 days and often recognize 200% ROI within weeks. Zuora is built from the ground up by SaaS industry visionaries and veterans from salesforce.com, WebEx, Accenture, Google, eBay, Oracle and Vitria. Zuora customers include Reed Business Information, InsideView, Marketo, Ricoh, Box.net, Ning, Ustream, Informatica, Barrett Xplore and Open Range. To learn more about Zuora, please visit www.zuora.com.