The Utility Company™ Quickly Expanding East and West in Canada

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
(Free-Press-Release.com) May 17, 2007 -- May 16, 2007 Ottawa, Canada – The Utility Company, the leading provider of information technology (IT) as a utility to small and medium-sized businesses (SMB), is pleased to welcome its newest affiliate franchisees as it continues to steamroll across North America with its complete business system designed to allow franchisees to enter and prosper in the managed IT services industry.

With the recent upgrade to its revolutionary Beyond Managed Services franchise opportunity, BMS 2.0, The Utility Company has made it simple for existing SMB service organizations to seamlessly add managed/utility IT services to their businesses with its new affiliate model. Two of the business types where the affiliate solution is a natural fit and makes an instant impact to their business are telecommunications resellers and the office equipment dealers.

Yves Aubin, owner of Multivox Conferencing Services, Inc. – a Teleconferencing Solutions Provider in Montreal, Quebec, has seen his business grow steadily since its inception in 2003. Offering both the tools and the service for tele- and web-conferencing, Yves saw his partnership with The Utility Company as a natural extension to his business. “Teleconferencing and web collaboration are becoming more and more of a commodity’, says Aubin. “The way I see it, adding value from services like conferencing is becoming less and less of a possibility.”

“In order to provide added value to our customers, Multivox needed to start providing a different service than the one it provides right now. Becoming a Utility Service Provider made sense as a relatively simple “plug-and-play” method to begin offering enterprise-level IT management services to our small and medium-sized customers…at prices they can easily afford”

Joe Russo, owner of Imagepath Printing Solutions in Downtown Vancouver, B.C., saw his partnership in much the same light, despite being in a different industry. “Becoming a Utility Service Provider makes perfect sense for the independent Office Equipment Dealer like myself”, said Russo. “We’ve been growing steadily in the past three years since opening our doors, but our customers are beginning to ask why we can’t take care of their networks as well as their office machines.”

“For me, its frustrating when you go to the customer’s office for a service call only to find out the problem isn’t on our end (with our equipment), it’s a fault somewhere in their network. We are both unhappy because of the loss in productivity over this issue. The customer doesn’t care who owns the problem, they just want it fixed!”

“Adding The Utility Company’s Connected Office services means this situation doesn’t arise”, continued Russo. “My customers now have a one-stop-shop at their service. If they have a problem, they do know who to call.”

From the customer’s perspective, having a single point of contact for office equipment and IT services means:

 No confusion as to who to call when they have an