UCS Solutions has become the first South African company to be awarded ISO20000 certification for IT service management, and the first African company (and fourth globally) to gain ISO22301, the new international standard for business continuity management.
Making it a hat trick, the company has also been awarded ISO27001 for information security management.
“Our clients are increasingly looking to us to provide IT as a service, allowing them to focus on their core businesses,” says Glen Khan, IT executive for governance, risk and compliance at UCS Solutions. “These three certifications objectively demonstrate our commitment to international standards and best practices.”
Khan explains that the three ISO certifications cover three key areas. The first is the service environment itself, which encompasses all of the elements of IT service delivery such as service management, change management, incident and problem management, supplier management, business relationship management and financial or commercial management.
ISO20000 demonstrates to clients that UCS Solutions can deliver IT functions as a service to international standards, while ISO27001 shows it can be trusted to safeguard client data – again to international standards. ISO22301 for business continuity management (BCM) is essential in establishing UCS Solutions as a highly qualified service provider.
“Our clients have the assurance that UCS Solutions, as their service provider, is well qualified to assist them to recover quickly from IT disaster scenarios and that the process and methodology used is aligned to the de facto standard in BCM.”
UCS Solutions has also been recertified as a SAP Hosting partner. Eugene van der Merwe, executive for technical applications and development, says the recertification confirms UCS Solutions’ adherence to SAP’s international standards.
“In addition, this recertification strongly supports UCS Solutions’ credibility as a supplier of end-to-end managed services in the SAP world,” he says. “We are seeing client demand for SAP as a service, so our qualifications as a hosting partner, are a very important aspect of our business.”