The Utility Company launches self-provisioning services portal 11 August, 2009 By Chris Talbot

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The portal makes it possible for SMBs to self-provision their own IT remote services on a pay-as-you-need basis. While the 1-866-My-Utility Per Minute service is available now (and has been for some time), additional services will be added during the third quarter, including anti-spam, security, online backup and storage, and remote monitoring offerings.

According to Mark Scott, president and founder of The Utility Company, the 1866MyUtility.com portal is the entry-level gateway for the company's services, which start with the pay-as-you-need services and go up to fixed fee managed services and virtual cloud services. Many customers will likely start with the pay-as-you-need services to see if they're a good fit and then migrate upwards to the more complicated services, he said.

"Looking at it, you're typically looking at maybe a customer that's looking and saying 'I'm not quite ready for fully fixed fee managed services right now.' It really kind of fits into this tactical 'do more with less' type customer," Scott said.

The first of the new services will be the advanced anti-spam services, which The Utility Company plans to roll out by the end of September. Following that will be an anti-virus security services, online backup and storage for servers, desktops and laptops, and 24/7 remote monitoring of critical IT infrastructure for automated maintenance.

The anti-spam service will be a very important one for a lot of SMBs, who continue to struggle with growing volumes of spam, he said.

"This is something we've been testing for months, and it's again another one of those need-to-have services," Scott said. The service is designed to eliminate 99 percent of incoming spam.

Customers will be able to do self-provisioning on the services so they can be up and running quicklky.

"It really is for that kind of new customers that have the approach of 'do more with less,'" Scott said.