World’s First Business Organization to Achieve ISO 20000-1 Certification

Accenture Technology Infrastructure Services in India, with delivery centers in Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai and Hyderabad, India, is the first business organization in the world to achieve ISO 20000 1:2005 certification—the international standard for IT infrastructure service management.

Accenture Technology Infrastructure Services provides sales support and service delivery for the Infrastructure Outsourcing business, a key service area Accenture is intent on growing as outlined in the Horizon 2012 outsourcing growth platform. In addition, Accenture Technology Infrastructure Services also provides infrastructure operations for the Global Delivery Network.

The International Organization for Standardization—also known as ISO, from the Greek meaning equal—is a network of the national standards institutes of 156 countries. Together, the country representatives work to develop and set global industrial and commercial standards that contribute to making the development, manufacturing and supply of products and services more efficient. ISO 20000 represents the first worldwide standard aimed at IT service management. It describes an integrated set of management processes, based on the IT Infrastructure Library—a library of best practices in IT service management—for the effective delivery of services to the business and its customers.

Qualifying for a standard not only is a recognition of an organization’s ability to comply with the industry best practices, but also is an important differentiator in attracting and retaining clients. This is critical for the Infrastructure Outsourcing business where Accenture must demonstrate leadership and take a more aggressive stance in the market, selling both bundled outsourcing and standalone infrastructure management services.

“As IT has evolved, quality of IT infrastructure services has become the prime business differentiator—the ISO 20000 provides clients with independent, third party assurance of the quality of service providers’ IT management capabilities,” explained Jayanta Lahiri, IT lead, India, Accenture Technology Infrastructure Services. “ISO 20000 Certification implies that clients will benefit from high quality, consistent and predictable IT infrastructure services at an optimized cost. Achieving the ISO 20000 is a remarkable achievement for Accenture Technology Infrastructure Services and for Accenture.”

Advantage over the competition

The ISO 20000 helps companies to align IT services and business strategy, to create a formal framework for current service improvement projects and provides a benchmark comparison with best practices. To qualify for the standard, Accenture Technology Infrastructure Services had to demonstrate management intention towards Service Management and Process Compliance across 12 domains including:

Service Delivery Processes (including service level management, availability management, service continuity, service financials and capacity management)
Service Support Processes (including incident management, problem management, change management, configuration and release management)
Relationship Processes (meaning the interfaces between the service provider, customers and suppliers)
Security Management Process through documentation and implementation

In addition, Accenture needed to establish documented processes for continuous improvement across these 12 domains. Clients served through the delivery centers in India on a range of outsourcing and systems integration engagements now will reap the benefits of both improved IT infrastructure service results and cost effectiveness of the services that Accenture delivers.

“Achieving ISO 20000 is a firm demonstration of high quality IT services within Accenture and ensures effective business continuity and planning,” said Everett Dyer, senior executive-Accenture Technology Infrastructure Services and Global Delivery lead. “In addition to being a real demonstration that our service delivery processes and capabilities are consistent with industry recognized best practices, it is a further demonstration that we are seriously in the IT infrastructure outsourcing business, and will give Accenture an edge over its competitors in outsourcing and systems integration engagements.”

As part of Accenture’s global delivery strategy, the company now is focused on ensuring that all Accenture Delivery Centers achieve ISO 20000 certification