Singapore Standard introduced for Service Providers

Business continuity and disaster recovery fundamentals are strong in Singapore because of its: Strategic geographical location - Free from natural disasters such as earthquakes and typhoons, Singapore is well known as a major financial, transportation and infocomm hub, and is home to more than 7,000 multinational corporations. Many use it as a launch pad to expand into the region.

With the most connected airport in the Asia Pacific, Singapore's excellent air transportation hub links Europe, North America and the rest of the world with 3,100 flights to and from 151 cities in 52 countries, served by more than 60 airlines. Pro-business environment - Singapore offers a sound financial and legal system, strong intellectual property protection, low corporate tax and various incentive schemes to companies establishing business operations here.

It has also developed a framework of policies and infocomm skills to provide a pro-business environment to work and live in. Excellent cable network & data centre infrastructures - Singapore is linked to the rest of the world by an extensive network of submarine cable systems, with 26 terabits per second of high-speed submarine cable capacity, and houses more than 1 million square feet of data centre space with capabilities that meet stringent standards in security, availability and service-level quality.

Business continuity & disaster recovery capabilities - The value chain supporting business continuity and disaster recovery in Singapore includes global and local leaders in business continuity consultancy, infocomm technology solutions, data centre and work-desk recovery services, and infrastructure and connectivity solutions.

A ready pool of trained and certified professionals is on hand to provide the full spectrum of business continuity and disaster recovery services. Standard for Business Continuity / Disaster Recovery Service Providers (SS507).

Singapore is the first country in the world to introduce a Standard and Certification programme for BC/DR service providers. Developed by the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore and the IT Standards Committee (ITSC), the Standard specifies the stringent requirements for BC/DR service providers. These requirements benchmark against the top practices in the region and stipulate the operating, monitoring and up-keeping of BC/DR services offered. Seven BC/DR service providers have been certified under the new Standard.

They are: Hewlett Packard, IBM, NCS Pte Ltd, and Singapore Computer Systems for the full BC/DR Service Provider category; and Equinix, SingTel Expan and StarHub for the Disaster Recovery Facility category. By engaging a certified BC/DR service provider, assurance is provided to the end-user and frees the company to focus on its core competencies. This enhances the company's competitive advantage as it is able to achieve stringent Recovery Time Objective, minimise business and data loss; and enjoy uninterrupted services. The certification also serves as a quality mark to inspire service providers to upgrade themselves to provide better services.

For more information, please contact: Mr Edmund Chong - edmund_chong@ida.gov.sg