Ntirety has announced that it will undergo the MSPAlliance's (MSPA) Unified Certification Standard for Cloud and Managed Service Providers audit (UCS). UCS is the first program of its kind, specifically designed and created to provide business consumers of cloud and managed services with the assurance that the service provider they hire meets or exceeds the highest principles of quality in areas such as financial stability, facilities, managed services practices, and customer satisfaction. "As the market matures for remote DBA companies, the bar has been getting raised higher and higher," Michael Corey, founder and president of Ntirety, tells 5 Minute Briefing.
Ntirety has been asked in the past by clients if it has a SAS-70 (Statement on Auditing Standards [SAS] No. 70, Service Organizations, developed by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants [AICPA])," says Corey. However, he observes, a SAS-70 audit is an accounting standard applied to an IT business and "it has no bearing on the quality of the service." On the other hand, says Corey, the MSPA Unified Certification Standard for Cloud and Managed Service Providers audit "is the first attempt at a comprehensive audit to truly gauge the quality of a cloud provider to provide services," and answer the question, "if people are relying on my business to be there when there is a problem, can my center really support that?"
There are two important aspects to the new certification, says Corey. For one, the MSPA has created an auditing standard that incorporates U.S. standards and non-U.S. standards, which is important to service providers like Ntirety that do business with companies all over the world, he says. "And, I like the fact that it is an independent organization that is really looking at cloud computing and people provide quality services over the cloud."
UCS was created using a wide base of criteria to benchmark managed IT solution providers, thereby ensuring that they have met or exceeded well-established standards of excellence and client care. Clients who select a company that is part of the UCS can be assured that their IT solution provider has met and exceeded standards related to physical and virtual security, as well as business and financial stability. In addition, the certification assures that the company has taken reasonable steps to assure that the client's IT needs will be safely and professionally addressed, and that the company is under constant external review from the MSPAand the IT profession to continually maintain and improve standards of care of excellence.
"The audit is performed by an independent accounting organization just like a traditional SAS-70 audit and then the validity of the audit is certified by an independent organization, which in this case is the MSPAlliance," says Corey.
Ntirety will be one of the first companies to participate in an Industry Standard Audit that measures a company's ability to provide quality services over the cloud, says Corey. "My hat goes off to the MSPAlliance for being an innovator and creating an audit standard that tackles the unique challenges of delivery services across the cloud."
Following completion of the MSPAlliance audit, Corey says, Ntirety will also do both a SAS-70 audit and the MSPA audit next year. "The reason is that at this point I have already done all the work of SAS-70 - plus some, so to get the SAS-70 will be an easy thing at that point." In doing so, he says, customers who really want that additional "check box" will get it.
For more information about Ntirety, visit www.ntirety.com.
For more information about the MSPAlliance, visit www.mspalliance.com.