The IT Outsourcing (ITO) companies in Europe often show up on the global sourcing radar. Factors such as engineering services, techies and Outsourced Product Development (OPD) make European ITO firms emerge on it. The same dynamics are now helping them to bag international standards.

Most recently, the Kyiv center (Ukrains) of EPAM, a European software engineering and ITO provider, has been awarded with SAS 70 Type II certification. The center has been recently assessed for the SAS 70 Type II requirements by Deloitte Co. Ltd., making EPAM the first company in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) with three SAS 70 Type II location certifications, including Budapest, Hungary, and Minsk, Belarus, and now Kyiv, Ukraine, with guarantees of the highest operational security levels.
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EPAM has delivery centers in Russia, Hungary, Belarus, and Ukraine. SAS 70 Type II certification completed for the three locations in Central and Eastern Europe. SAS 70, a Statement on Auditing Standards (SAS) No. 70, Service Organizations, was developed by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) as a method to measure a service organization’s efficiency in providing due controls over sensitive customer data.

This is not the only standard / certification bagged by EPAM. The company’s internal quality management system complies with ISO 9001:2000 requirements for its software development center in Minsk, Belarus. In fact other European companies also got certified years ago. Exigen Services’ SEI CMMI Level 5 and ISO-9001 certifications, IBA Group’s ISO 9001:2000 SEI CMMI Level 4 certifications, Luxoft’s SEI CMM Level 4 certification, Reksoft’s ISO 9001:2000 and CMMI level 4 certifications set the entire case of European providers with international standards.

Beside skilled techies and world-class OPD services, these companies have another reason to allure buyers across the globe — international standards / certifications.

Do you think these certifications actually influence the buyers’ decision?