Mark Scott

Ottawa-based information technology services provider The Utility Company has won three new U.S. customers in the financial services sector.

All three clients have recently started using Utility's Connected Office model, which offers customers a suite of information technology hardware, software and services as a utility for a monthly fee per user.

"Corporate IT is not only one of the top expenditures by most businesses; it is also the top consumer of energy and other non-renewable resources in most offices," said Utility's president Mark Scott in a statement. "Having a service technician jump in a car to service you on-site, when 95 per cent of support and problem resolution can be delivered remotely, contributes to this inefficiency. Choosing more energy-efficient systems, or even better, virtualizing those systems in web-based services, allows businesses to reduce energy consumption by over 80 per cent."

One of the new customers, wealth management firm Patton, Albertson & Miller, will be using the Connected Office Managed packages in all three of its offices in Georgia, Atlanta and North Carolina. The firm will move its e-mail from an Exchange server to Utility's Hosted Exchange solution, and shift its archival company into becoming a new secure one.

Georgia-based financial services company Accounts Recovering Inc. will be using Utility to continuously monitor its infrastructure and support all of its employees, including remote users.

As well, Californian mortgage services firm Golden Bear Mortgage has chosen to switch over to Utility's model from the IT service provider it had been using for the past decade.

"100 years ago electricity moved from a corporate-owned asset to a utility delivered in a consumption-based model," said Mr. Scott. "That happened when an electrical grid was established. That same grid now exists for information technology to be delivered in a high-efficiency, low-cost model – that grid is the Internet."

Utility will be launching its latest enhancement to the Connected Office model in November.