ATLANTA – Southern Company has been recognized for excellence in data center management by receiving the Compass Data Center of the Year Award for 1999. Southern Company won the award for specific criteria including a 50% reduction in unit costs between 1996 and 1998 and for achieving the lowest "Hugo Factor" of any client. (Hugo is a Compass measure that expresses hardware and software price, quality, and productivity in data center management as a single numeric calculation.)

The awards have been presented annually since 1989 by Compass America, a management consulting firm specializing in business and information technology (IT) performance improvement for Fortune 1000 organizations. The awards are based on objective measurements of efficiency, productivity, and service quality in IT operations, and are given in various categories such as data center, desktop, network, application development, and overall management excellence.

“This award is the culmination of five years of strategic effort to lower our costs, which has helped gain efficiencies and increase value for Southern Company as a whole,” said Robert Beason, Southern Company senior vice president of information resources and chief information officer.

"To select the Compass of the Year award winners, we apply objective and rigorous criteria of cost efficiency, productivity, and service quality," said David Burkett, president of Compass America. "Based on those criteria, we concluded that Southern Company operates a data center that is best of breed and truly world class."

Other award winners have included Mobil Corp., Bank One, Johnson & Johnson, Belk Stores, and SUPERVALU. Companies that have conducted performance improvement engagements with Compass within the past twelve months are eligible. Southern Company (NYSE: SO) is an international energy company that operates more than 48,000 megawatts of electric generating capacity worldwide. It is the largest producer of electricity in the United States and one of the world’s largest independent power producers. Southern Company subsidiaries and their affiliates serve 12 million retail customers worldwide and millions more through the wholesale market. Based in Atlanta, Southern Company is the parent firm of Alabama Power, Georgia Power, Gulf Power, Mississippi Power and Savannah Electric.

Through its Southern Energy Inc. subsidiary, Southern Company has operations in 12 countries on five continents and has a growing presence in North America with assets in the Northeast, the Midwest, California and Texas. Southern Company also provides energy-related marketing, trading and technical services in the United States and Europe and offers Southern LINC wireless telecommunications.