News release

News release

23 March 2004

COL scores another Hong Kong first with ISO 9001 certification for business continuity services

Hong Kongs leading IT services provider, COL Limited, has scored another first by winning ISO 9001 quality assurance certification for its state-of-the-art business continuity solutions. The organisation currently supports more than 100 of Hong Kongs top companies, including every major bank, also won certification for its flagship data centre services, facilities management service and its data processing operations.

The development marks the latest step in a 30 year track record of innovation for COL. It was the first company to offer bureau-based online computing service to the territorys banks, the first to introduce disaster recovery services for enterprise IT systems and the first to offer business continuity services a field in which it has become the dominant player.

COL has always led the market in terms of IT services and best industry practices. The award of ISO 9001 certification provides our customers with an even greater level of comfort and confidence than they already enjoy independently verified by an internationally recognised and respected body, said Calvin Fung, Chief Operating Officer of COL Limited.

The ISO 9001 initiative began nearly a year ago. However, the process was hampered by the SARS outbreak and the war in Iraq, both of which put COLs business continuity resources on the highest state of alert. The unsettled environment also highlighted the need to provide customers with ironclad quality assurance.

One of COLs first steps was to examine its operations to determine how things were done and identify areas where improvements might be made. This required the development of new metrics against which performance could be gauged.

We looked at things like customer satisfaction levels and incident resolution times. We set internal guidelines that exceeded the service level agreed in our contracts and put the processes in place to ensure that they are met or bettered in all instances. For example, service level agreements define specific response times in the case of a disaster recovery invocation, but there is no specification for rehearsal set-up times. We set our own targets for disaster recovery rehearsal set-up and have been steadily improving them, by up to 70 per cent in some cases, and we are narrowing that still further, said Fung.

When COL was audited for ISO 9001 compliance last December by SGS, which is the global leader in certification, verification and testing, COL passed with flying colours, producing no major nor minor incidents of non-compliance.

COL will continue to be audited on a yearly basis to ensure it remains fully compliant, adhering to the ISO 9001 criteria and international best practices.

The bottom line is that independent third-party standards assure customers that their information assets at COL are fully protected. ISO certification is increasingly important for regional players and critical for the blue chip multinational organisations that make up a significant share of our customers, said Fung.

About COL

COL is Hong Kongs leading independent computer services company, with over 30 years of local experience and employing over 200 people. COL provides data centre services including facilities management, disaster recovery and full business recovery along with professional services for application and network development. COL is the Hong Kong distributor for world leading hardware solutions in the areas of data storage, networking and printing, and software solutions for business intelligence, business performance management (BPM) and human resource management. COL is a Microsoft Certified Partner, a Cisco Silver Partner, StorageTek distributor, Hyperion distributor & Implementation Partner and Oracle Preferred Implementation Partner. More information about COL can be found on the Web at http://www.col.com.hkIssued on behalf of COL Ltd

by Firebrand Communications

For further information, please contact:

Norris Hickerson (COL): (852) 2118 3888

(email: norris@col.com.hk)

Brian Paterson (Firebrand): (852) 2122 9760

(email: brian@firebrand.com.hk)

Note to editors: this release can also be found on the Firebrand Web site at www.firebrand.com.hk. For enquiries on releases by email, please call Jane Wong at (852) 2122 9760 or send message to jane@firebrand.com.hk