As of July 2009, ANECT is certified to ISO/IEC 20000, which is the world ICT Service Management standard. The certificate was issued by the internationally recognized certification body DET NORSKE VERITAS (DNV). Nevertheless, three years ago ANECT already witnessed introducing this standard in the Czech Republic, as it made a proposal of the Czech version for the Czech Institute of Standards and Norms.

“The ISO/IEC 20000 standard is already required by some of our customers in both private and public market sector, and in future we expect that it will be required by all customers automatically. The certification guarantees that our internal processes are in accordance with best practices in ICT Service Management and that we provide our customers with outstanding quality,” said Jaroslav Hlousek, ANECT Managing Director.

The IT Service Management standard ISO/IEC 20000 is based on the UK standard BS 15000 and it is aligned with the process approach defined by the UK Office of Government Commerce (OGC) in the IT Infrastructure Library methodology (ITIL). The standard requires IT services providers to use the principles of process management, to define, measure and assess the quality of services they provide to their customers, and to improve them continuously. In the Czech business environment, the standard is rather new – it was published only in 2006.

“The number of Czech companies with this certificate remains rather small – and most of those who have it are ICT service providers themselves. Nonetheless, the ISO/IEC 20000 standard can be also beneficial for other businesses: if they have their IT departments certified, they will be sure the processes and services provided by their employees are up to the latest standard,” said Jaroslav Hlousek.

The main purpose of the certification is to have consistent procedures in IT services and infrastructure and to have effective IT Service Management in general. That is a great advantage for customers and subscribers because a certified IT services provider must have clearly defined indicators, showing the quality of the services provided, and is obliged to discuss (duly and regularly) any parameter variations with the customer.

Most companies also appreciate a minimum number of outages and a significant improvement in the quality of IT support and IT services accessibility. They highly value overall process standardization, which dramatically increases the potential of information technologies to react quickly to the ever-changing world of business and almost instantly adapt to specific needs of individual customers.

The certification benefits for IT services providers include modernized and improved IT processes, and also a significant reduction of costs due to higher productivity, better coordination between information technologies and company business goals, and consistent use of time-tested procedures and methods.