Press Releases

Utility Choice Electric Chooses CyrusOne for Network Infrastructure Management

Houston, TX, December 15, 2004 - Utility Choice Electric, a privately held Retail Electric Provider in Texas, has signed a contract granting CyrusOne management of their tactical IT infrastructure in a move designed to ensure customer service while optimizing Utility Choice’s return on IT investment.

Supporting an initiative to improve data center redundancy and availability, Utility Choice decided to utilize a local data services company. But after meeting with a CyrusOne representative, the company decided not just to co-locate, but also to outsource the management of its IT infrastructure to CyrusOne’s Houston data center, including SQL servers, databases, Web servers, network management, and more. The company’s information and equipment are moving into the data center this week.

Outsourcing IT infrastructure will also help Utility Choice manage growth. “High-growth companies like this can’t continuously sink money into IT staffing and facilities if they expect to stay competitive,” comments CyrusOne’s vice president of sales and marketing Blake McClane. He continues: “This way, they get guaranteed protection, availability and management--yet still get to keep financial predictability. Now their IT team can focus on strategic technology and customer experience issues, while keeping the everyday burdens that can kill staff productivity--dealing with availability crises, managing change, scaling IT resources and the like--out of their hair.”

“It’s a big win for everyone,” notes Utility Choice IT Vice President, Chris Hutto. He comments: “Outsourced IT management has come a long way. The price of outsourcing all of these headaches wasn’t that much more than the cost of co-location in our case. And CyrusOne is clearly the most solid choice. It proved to us beyond a doubt that its staff members know both their business and ours. And even with all their expertise, they proved flexible and helpful--an excellent cultural fit for our organization. We’re very comfortable with CyrusOne’s ability to deliver competitive advantage we can take to the marketplace and pass onto our customers.”

About Utility Choice Electric
Utility Choice Electric is a certified Retail Electric Provider (REP) in the state of Texas providing a reliable and competitively priced supply of electricity and related services to the state’s industrial, commercial, and residential customers. Headquartered in Houston, Texas, Utility Choice Electric brings over 250 years of combined executive experience in the energy service industry with extensive expertise in the implementation of advanced techniques for customer relations, services, sales, and marketing. For more information about Utility Choice Electric, please visit www.uchoice.com.

About CyrusOne
CyrusOne is Houston’s largest full-service data center, providing managed hosting, colocation and enterprise management services. We ensure application availability, data security and superior network performance for some of Houston’s top companies, and were the first business of our kind to offer a 100 percent availability guarantee backed by the industry’s leading Service Level Agreement. For more information, visit www.cyrusone.com


For Press Information:
Josh Howard
CyrusOne
Marketing Manager
713.821.1273
jhoward@cyrusone.com