A subsidiary of Entergy Corp. threatened in a lawsuit filed this month that almost half a million Entergy customers would be unable to access their online bills next month unless it could prevent the detonation of a software "time bomb."
Entergy Services Inc. of New Orleans sued Allen Systems Group Inc. of Naples, Fla., also known as ASG, on Aug. 9 in Pulaski County Circuit Court, claiming that Allen Systems Group demanded that Entergy Services pay an access fee for allowing Entergy's contractors to work on the system on which the software was installed.
The time bomb was scheduled to stop Entergy Services' use of the software on Aug. 31. But Pulaski County Judge Tim Fox ordered Allen Systems Group to provide the software key by this past Monday.
The software company provided the key and it worked.
"While we do not comment on pending litigation, we can say we are working to resolve the issue with [Allen Systems]," an Entergy spokesman said in a prepared statement. "We do not anticipate this matter having any impact on Entergy customers or our operations."
The software is installed on a server in Little Rock, Christopher Dickinson, the information technology manager for customer systems for Entergy Services, said in an affidavit filed in the case.
About 480,000 of Entergy Corp.'s customers in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas receive electronic notices to view their monthly statement. Entergy Corp. provides electricity to 2.8 million customers in the four states.
Entergy has paid Allen Systems hundreds of thousands of dollars for software licenses and maintenance since 2001, the lawsuit said.
"[Allen Systems'] software contains an internal time bomb that must be deactivated with a software key provided by ASG before the expiration date set by ASG for the time bomb," Dickinson said. "There is no way for [Entergy Services] to work around ASG's time bomb. ASG provided a software key in August of 2015 that expired in 2016 while the license agreement extended through 2017.
"As a result, ASG required [Entergy Services] to contact ASG to request a new software key even though [Entergy Services] has already paid to use the software for the coming year."
Entergy Services considers the software to be a Tier 1 system, the most critical level possible, Dickinson said. The software is allowed to be down only 4.5 minutes during any 30-day period because of unplanned failures, Dickinson said.
Dennis Dallimore, Entergy Services director of solution development and architecture, said in another affidavit that it is "very unusual" to include a "time bomb in software that expires before the underlying license for that software."
"It is my belief that ASG did so in this case to force [Entergy Services] to contact ASG so ASG could market additional products and services to [Entergy Services]," Dallimore said.
Allen Systems claims that Entergy Services must pay an additional access fee for third-party contractors to have access to Allen Systems' software, Dickinson said. In April, Teresa Woolard of Little Rock, an employee with another Entergy Services vendor, contacted Allen Systems Group to resolve an issue with the licensed software. She was one of Entergy Services' primary support resources for Allen Systems Group's products used by Entergy Services, Dickinson said.
"Ms. Woolard would have been one of those third-party contractors with access to ASG's software," Dickinson said.
John Baker and Lyn Pruitt, Little Rock attorneys representing Allen Systems Group, and Mike Shannon, a Little Rock attorney for Entergy Services, did not return phone calls seeking comment about the case.
Business on 08/25/2016