Sun and ASP Center Award Asia South's First SunToneSM Certified Data Centers
NCS, i-STT and FailSafe Earn Prestigious SunTone Certified Status
"ASP Center recognizes that establishing high quality service levels is key to all service providers
and certification is an assurance of their competency. One of the key objectives of the ASP Center is to help
develop quality ASP services on the Internet. One way of ensuring quality is through the SunTone Certification
Program which will allow Singapore service providers such as FailSafe, i-STT and NCS to differentiate their
services and enable them to compete internationally,"
Professor Robert Gay
Director of ASP Center
HIGHLIGHTS
Company:
- National Computer Systems
- i-STT
- FailSafe
Industry/Market:
- Managed Hosting Service Provider
Key Business Issues:
- Differentiating services from other service providers
- Finding ways to guarantee customers high quality applications and services
- Benchmarking services against the industry's best
Business Results:
- Among the first in Asia South to attain SunTone certified status
- Attained "seal of approval" confirming that they have met the high standards
for excellence in infrastructure, operation practice, performance, security, availability
and reliability
- Achieved recognition based on industry's best practices and high quality standards
- Obtained an additional level of assurance that they provide secure, scalable and
continuously available services
Alliance:
One of the key objectives of the ASP Center is to help develop quality ASP services
on the Internet. One way of ensuring quality is through the SunTone Certification Program
which will allow Singapore service providers to differentiate their services and enable them
to compete internationally," said Professor Robert Gay, Director of ASP Center.
"The certification processes for NCS, i-STT and FailSafe took over six months.
The hard work and efforts by these DCs were well rewarded as they are the first to
achieve SunTone Certification in Asia South."
Summary
The Application Service Provider (ASP) Center was appointed by Sun Microsystems to provide auditing services
for the SunTone Services Program in the Asia South region (ASEAN & India). Within several months of
stringent auditing, three leading Data Centers (DCs) - FailSafe, i-STT, and NCS achieved certification
under the SunTone Certification and Branding Program; the first in the Asia South region to do so.
These three DCs have since benefited in terms of customer confidence as well as attained
a "seal of approval" confirming that they have met the high standards for excellence in
infrastructure, operation practice, performance, security, availability and reliability.
About the ASP Center
The Application Service Provider (ASP) Center is a joint initiative of the Infocomm
Development Authority (Singapore), Nanyang Technological University and Sun Microsystems.
The mission of the Center is to develop and propagate the ASP model of business on the
Internet. This is in concert with Singapore's aspiration to be a major hub for Web-based
services.
Officially launched on 16 July 2001, the ASP Center is established under Sun's Java Tarik 2
initiative for the purpose of ASP industry development, incubation and research. The ASP Center was
appointed by Sun as its only auditor for the SunTone Program in Asia South, providing auditing
services for the service industry in Singapore and the region.
The SunTone Specification is an industry standard that is developed and reviewed by the SunTone
Architectural Council, which is made up of more than 80 industry powerhouses in the service provider
space. In order to ensure that the standard is always relevant to industry needs, the SunTone
Architectural Council meets regularly to incorporate new requirements to the specifications in
every new release. SunTone is the only standard that continually raises the bar of the best
practices in the service provider industry.
Three of the leading DCs in Singapore - NCS, i-STT and FailSafe - saw the importance and value
of being SunTone certified, despite the stringent review and certification process they had to undergo
with the ASP Center.
Challenges for ASPs
These DCs were aware of the importance of differentiating their services from the many ASPs
operating in the region, all claiming their application services to be "scalable", "secure"
and "high performance". For the ASPs' potential customers, evaluating and selecting outsourced
applications and services had been a daunting task. The goals of both ASPs and DCs were to
differentiate themselves from the competition and guarantee high quality applications and
services to their customers. In addition, participating in the SunTone Program allowed them
to benchmark their services against the industry's best.
The preparations for the certification process typically required at least
six months where they conducted self-assessments and prepared the necessary documentation
for submission to the auditor, ASP Center. The DCs were evaluated for best practices in service
delivery, infrastructure, operational practices, support staff competency and the ability to
provide and deliver on Service Level Agreements (SLAs).
"ASP Center recognizes that establishing high quality service levels is key to
all service providers and certification is an assurance of their competency. "
What it means to attain SunTone status
All three DCs were proud of their achievements. "The whole audit process was long but it was
worthwhile because it confirmed that NCS processes and quality of service are recognized based
on industry best practices and high quality standards" said Lau Soon Liang, Assistant Chief
Executive of NCS Outsourcing Services. "In fact, SunTone is the first industry program
that comprehensively evaluates service provider operations for reliability, predictability and security."
"Achieving certification through the SunTone Certification Program is an excellent endorsement
that FailSafe has an exceptionally high standard of performance, security, scalability,
reliability and resilience in our infrastructure hosting and co-location services. This validates
our aggressive business model of providing high quality enterprise-level services
based on world-class standards and best practices, and ranging from outsourcing to hosting and
business continuity to our clients . Our customers now have an additional level of assurance that
we do indeed provide secure, scalable and continuously available services across the enterprise,"
said Lee J. Volante, Chief Marketing Officer of FailSafe Corporation (Singapore) Pte Ltd.
"i-STT has invested extensively in our WEBCenter facilities and in its people to ensure
that we deliver uncompromising standards of reliability, scalability, and security," commented
Mr. Wong Ka Vin, Chief Sales Officer of i-STT. "The objectives of the SunTone Certification
Program is synonymous with i-STT's vision for enabling the Net economy with proven product
and service offerings. Receiving SunTone Certification is a timely recognition of our efforts
and commitment to quality service delivery."
These three DCs have since benefited in terms of customer confidence as well as attained
a "seal of approval" confirming that they have met the high standards for excellence in
infrastructure, operation practice, performance, security, availability and reliability.
Today, all of these DCs continue to leverage the SunTone seal of approval as a
key differentiator in their services. According to feedback, 9 out of 10 potential
customers (many of them being world-class MNCs) now ask these data centers if they
are SunTone certified. This certainly gives credence to the certified DCs, setting
them apart from those without certification.
About the SunTone Certification and Branding Program
The SunTone Certification and Branding Program, led by Sun Microsystems, Inc., is a
collaborative effort with industry-wide support to promote 7-by-24 service and reliability
as a norm for Internet-based services. Under the SunTone Program, service providers, independent
software vendors and integrators endure a rigorous review process which examines infrastructure,
operational practices, hardware, software, and overall service delivery to help ensure that
the services or products provided by a company meet the SunTone Program's best practices and
high quality standards. Certification under the SunTone Program is designed to give customers
the confidence that each aspect of the company's operations and infrastructure has been evaluated
and judged to be reliable and of high quality. Launched in May 1999, the SunTone Program has
more than 1,500 applicants for certification and more than 200 SunTone Certified solutions
available to meet a variety of business needs currently.
About National Computer Systems Pte Ltd
As the region's leading IT service provider, National Computer Systems
Pte Ltd (NCS) has close to two decades of managing data center services.
Its latest offering of managed hosting services is seen as an augmentation
of its expertise in the field. With a regional presence in ten locations
across six countries in the Asia Pacific, NCS is ready to enable
the e-commerce initiatives of the region's medium and large enterprises.
The customers of NCS managed hosting services include businesses
ready to establish a web presence, application service providers
wanting to deploy services and applications on the Internet without
heavy infrastructure investments and content developers who want
to offer their customers more than Web development. For more information,
visit www.ncs.com.sg
About FailSafe
FailSafe Corporation (Singapore) Pte Ltd ("FailSafe") is a joint venture with equal
participation between FailSafe Corporation Holdings Pte Ltd and Singapore Tele-communications
Limited (SingTel). As a tech-nology utility company, FailSafe delivers "on-tap", scalable,
secure and continuously available computing solutions to businesses. Through our enterprise
technology services of full-scale IT outsourcing, application and web hosting, co-location,
business continuity, network management, managed storage, tape and data vaulting, and managed
services, FailSafe provides resilient enterprise-wide solutions to companies regardless of
the computing platforms or business functions they support.
About i-STT
i-STT is a leading provider of managed IT infrastructure services that help customers
effectively manage their IT investments for optimal performance, continuous availability and
immediate scalability. Leveraging its world-class IP-based WEBCenter data center facilities
located in strategic business cities in Asia, i-STT offers an infrastructure outsourcing
solution that combines the essentials of telecommunications, Internet connectivity and
network access offered through its telecommunication community hub with application
infrastructure services such as operations support, monitoring, managed security,
managed platforms and outsourced enterprise messaging to support its customers'
mission-critical servers, Internet and business applications and data. i-STT's managed
IT infrastructure service capabilities and technical competencies are integrated
with other value-added services under two business focuses: WEBCenter services and
Global Network Services. The company markets and sells its services globally,
and currently has in-country operations in Singapore, Bangkok and Shanghai.
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