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London — 6th December 2016 – The Zero Outage Industry Standard Association announced today that IBM has joined the association as a founding member to provide a common framework for IT-Quality with a focus on platforms, people, processes and security. Within the next weeks all partners will continue to work together to specify new guidelines for the industry standard which will be published on the association’s website zero-outage.com

Bernhard J Klingenberg, CTO, IBM Resiliency Services said: “In today’s digitized world, ‘always-on’ services and solutions are paramount for IBM clients and customers. IBM has a proud tradition of supporting open source communities and industry collaborations, and always strives to serve our clients’ interests in an integrated and unified way. We are honored to contribute our experience as a leading services integrator to this new standard with the Zero Outage Industry Standard Association to encourage the continued availability and reliability of IT infrastructures today and in the future.”

During the association’s first board of directors meeting on Nov 25th, 2016, Stephan Kasulke, SVP global Quality at T-Systems International has been voted as new chairman of the board of directors for the Zero Outage Industry Standard association. He explained:

“As an organization’s IT infrastructure can involve a complex ecosystem of technologies from a variety of vendors, there are often differing levels of service level agreements in place which can lead to critical defaults and security issues. I am very enthusiastic to be the first Chairman of the Zero Outage Association – this is the start of a long journey towards a stable Telecommunications, IT and IoT.”

Digitization is in full swing: machines communicate with each other, processes are becoming more and more efficient and automation is an integral part of the process. But all can only work if the IT behind it runs smoothly. A failure, even for a few minutes, can have fatal consequences. If production bands are stopped due to IT problems, companies are threatened with image losses and costs of millions.

If systems fail in the airport tower or in hospitals in the worst case scenario, human life is threatened. No matter how big a company is or which industry it belongs to, a reliable and smoothly functioning of information and communication technology is important. Therefore quality is becoming a decisive competitive factor in the age of digitalization. According to Gartner, the average CIO is already spending 18 percent of the organization’s budget in support of digitalization, with that number expected to increase to 28 percent by 2018.

About Zero Outage Industry Standard:

Zero Outage Industry Standard is an association based in London, United Kingdom. Founding members include renowned companies within the IT-sector: Brocade Communications Systems, Inc., Cisco Systems, Inc., EMC Corporation, Hitachi Data Systems Corporation (HDS), IBM Corporation, NetApp, Inc., SAP SE, SUSE PLC and T-Systems International GmbH. The Zero Outage industry standard association is providing a framework of best practices and standards to enable the delivery of secure, reliable and highly available end-to-end IT services and solutions. The goal is to develop a common standard for IT processes, platforms, people and security to safeguard quality and reliability at all levels.

Zero Outage Useful Contacts

Marketing & Communications
Email: info@zero-outage.com
Further information for media representatives: www.zero-outage.com

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Twitter: twitter.com/zero_outage
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/zero-outage-industry-standard

BARCELONA —6th November 2016 — A group of technology companies announced that they have joined together to establish a Zero Outage industry standard to safeguard quality and reliability of IT infrastructure. The common goal of the group is to maximize availability and customer satisfaction by improving stability and security by defining an industry best practice based on a Zero Outage framework.

The association’s founding members are: Brocade, Cisco, Dell EMC, HDS, Juniper, NetApp, SAP, SUSE and T-Systems.

The digital world is increasingly dependent on IT. A technical defect, human error or untrained process execution can be a threat to everyday operations. Therefore manufacturers and service companies are growing a sense of urgency for an uninterruptible supply of their services. With the Zero Outage Industry Standard Association, major tech-companies want to start an industry-wide discussion and work out a common understanding of quality.
In order to enable highly stable operations, companies need to be able to control the quality of platforms, people, processes and security throughout the whole supply chain. The Zero Outage Industry Standard association intends to specify consistent error response times, employee qualification levels and set security and platform requirements. This can help companies to minimize errors, increase availability, ensure security and operate cost-effectively.
The association members all come from different fields of the IT industry. The aim is to work together as partners and develop an industry wide known and respected “Best Practice” approach to ensure a stable and secure IT environment. The framework will be published on www.zero-outage.com.

Quotes:

Richard Nicolas, Chief Customer Office, Dell: “Dell focuses on delivering the best technology, service, end-to-end processes, and security to enable industries around the world to conduct business continuously with zero interruption. To achieve this, we are a member of the Zero Outage Association, where we focus on eliminating outages while navigating the digital shift, and resiliency in a world of heterogeneous ICT.“

Bernd Leukert, Member of the Executive Board, SAP SE, Products & Innovation: “For more than four decades now, SAP customers are relying on high availability of mission critical systems for their core business processes. Today they expect a 7×24 service availability that includes the Internet of Things, real-time and mobile use cases. With the Zero Outage Industry Standard Association we want to improve overall IT capabilities with Zero Outage as our ultimate goal.“

Reinhard Clemens, CEO T-Systems International GmbH: “Zero Outage started as a quality program at T-Systems and has now grown into an industry standard. Together with our partners, we provide top quality and increase customer satisfaction. The focus on Zero Outage is indispensable for our interconnected world and a mandatory thing for digitization.“

Jim Tooley, VP Global Services & Support, Brocade: “As a founder member of the Zero outage standard, Brocade is excited to be at the start of what will be industry changing. Driving infrastructures that meet the zero outage standard will mean greater productivity as we move into the full digitization of data and help organisations to embrace digital transformation.”

Michael Jores, SUSE Regional Director Central Europe: “Service uptime is key in today’s Digital age. Expectations for reliable and round-the-clock access require companies to ensure availability through leading-edge business processes and mission-critical-enabled infrastructure. Together with partners, SUSE is committed to provide this reliable infrastructure Joining with Zero Outage will provide new insight and practices to enable today’s companies to deliver secure, reliable services and solutions.”

Alexander Wallner, NetApp Senior Vice President & General Manager EMEA: “Today’s businesses run on digitized data. In this data-driven world, 24/7 systems availability and the ability to react in realtime are indispensable – any interruption to core business applications threatens a company’s ability to execute, putting itself and customers at risk. We are proud to be a founding member of the Zero Outage Industry Standard initiative to improve the quality of IT infrastructure.”

Daniel Dalle Carbonare, Vice President, EMEA Central Region & General Manager Germany, Hitachi Data Systems: “Hitachi Data Systems solutions and services help lay the foundation for successful digital transformation with a unified and strategic approach to a company’s most valuable and strategic asset: Its data. For over 100 years, we have been known for highest service levels and data availability and know that availability is paramount in our era of maximum business continuity. We are honored and very pleased to be a founding member or the Zero Outage Consortium in order to shape strategies and requirements for the benefit of always-on businesses and societies.”

Cedrik Neike, Senior Vice President, Global Service Provider, APJ & EMEAR, Cisco: “The aim of the Zero Outage Association addresses a critical challenge for our customers as they digitise their businesses. Cisco understands the interdependence of technology, processes, skilled workforces and partnerships towards achieving zero downtime. As a founding member, we can share our expertise to help this initiative achieve its goals for the greater benefit of our customers.”

About Zero Outage Industry Standard:

Zero Outage Industry Standard is an association based in London, United Kingdom. Founding members include renowned companies within the IT-sector: Brocade Communications Systems, Inc., Cisco Systems, Inc., EMC Corporation, Hitachi Data Systems Corporation (HDS), Juniper Networks, Inc., NetApp, Inc., SAP SE, SUSE PLC and T-Systems International GmbH. The Zero Outage industry standard association is providing a framework of best practices and standards to enable the delivery of secure, reliable and highly available end-to-end IT services and solutions. The goal is to develop a common standard for IT processes, platforms, people and security to safeguard quality and reliability at all levels.

Zero Outage Useful Contacts

Marketing & Communications
Email: info@zero-outage.com
Further information for media representatives: www.zero-outage.com

Social Media

Twitter: twitter.com/zero_outage
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/zero-outage-industry-standard