Singapore (5 Jun 2017) - EPI is honoured to have received the award for the '50 Fastest Growing Company of the Year 2017'. Silicon Review interviewed EPI Group of Companies Chairman & CEO, Edward van Leent on the history of EPI, the pivotal milestones in the few short years when it grew to become the global leader in data centre professional training & certification and data centre audit & certificiation. Read the interview on Silicon Review, click here!, or read the copy, below.

Headquartered in Singapore, EPI is a European origin country that delivers an extensive range of Data Centre infrastructure devices. EPI's global service delivery aims at providing organizations with all types of data centre services - data centre audit certification, data centre consulting and data centre and IT training courses. This enables the companies to design, implement, optimize, test, operate and maintain their mission of meeting businesses expectations. EPI also offers certified IT professional training courses which are fully aligned with the e-CF (European e-Competence Framework) such as CITP/CITS/CITE.

EPI is celebrating this year their 30th anniversary. EPI's credo "Protecting your Interests" has earned them the trust of many organisations around the world.

An excerpt of our interview with EPI's Chairman & CEO

Why was the company set up? How did you select the vertical of your company and decided to be a part of the global platform?

When EPI was founded in 1987, we started of as a data centre design and build company that served various industries. In 1999 the Singapore office was incorporated to serve the Asia-Pacific market. But the way the Asian market back then was operating was totally different, the purchasing behavior of customers and the way competition was operating in the local market meant that the European model of operating was not well suited for this new market we entered. When I joined EPI in 1999, I reviewed the then current situation, and decided that we had to change course if we wanted to be successful. We entered the data centre audit and certification market and created the data centre training market. EPI is now, by far, the largest data centre training provider in the world.

Could you tell us about the launch of your first product? Please share with us the experience of the first project roll on. 

We launched our first accredited data centre course in 2000, called CDCP - Certified Data Centre Professional that provides candidates with the knowledge of all aspects of the data centre.  The CDCP course has become a well-known, respected and recognized training program in the market. We had the fortune of training many companies and that has helped us in becoming a household name for many companies who keep coming back to train their staff on our whole range of courses available.

What were the grounds on which you have expanded your company and its offerings over the years?

Our clients' need to protect their valuable data and deploy their mission critical infrastructure efficiently and effectively. Since we are playing such a fundamentally critical role for our customers, we always must ensure that we operate at the highest level of ethics and professionalism. To grow as a company whilst at the same time ensure consistency in delivering high quality services to our customers I ensured that we live by a few firm principles and culture at EPI. First of all, 'Win Ethically'.  Secondly, 'Focus'.  Rather than trying to have a large portfolio, we prefer to have a relatively small and very focused service portfolio at which we can be, and often are, the best in the industry. Thirdly, 'No compromise on quality'.  We believe that in the long-term interest of our customers and ultimately also EPI, we always need to deliver quality services which meet and exceed our customers' expectations. With these core principles we have been able to build trust with our customers as they know that our credo 'Protecting Your Interests' is not an empty statement but something we live by.

How do you and your company contribute to the global IT platform and society at large?

Our team has been working very hard in placing our company's name on the globe. EPI has released many worlds' first such as the Data Centre Competence Framework (DCCF), the Data Centre Operations Standard (DCOS), the first IT Training Framework based on the European c-Competence Framework and the Data Centre Career Planning Tool; to name a few. We have very recently launched the world's first Data Centre Career Planning Tool (DCPT). We have been leading the industry with many innovative services assisting our customers to survive in this competitive market place.

Do you have any new services to be rolled out into the market?

We have launched the Data Centre Operations Standard (DCOS), which in few days has received lots of popularity in the market. We are proud to inform you that in the last 3 months about 2,000 downloads have already taken place and we are hoping for more downloads in the coming time. Our new IT Training Framework (CITx) is also catching everyone's eye and we are planning to make few announcements in the coming months. Since this year is our 30th year anniversary we have lined up quite a number of promotions which will please the market for sure.

Meet the Chairman & CEO, EPI Group of Companies

Edward van Leent has held varies senior management positions in multinational companies in the areas of customer services, business development, sales & marketing and senior strategic management before joining EPI.

Edward is a member of AFCOM, FEA, ASHRAE and many other organizations. He is also the vice-chairman of the workgroup for the Singapore Standard for BC/DR SS507 and is part of the standard committees for standards such as ANSI/TIA-942 and BICSI-002.  He has been awarded top awards in a number of multinational companies in which he served of which the 'Chairman Achievement Award' at Mentor Graphics and the 'Excellence Award' 'World Wide Field Operations Excellence Award' at Sequent are three of the most distinct awards he has received. In 2015 he received the 'CEO of the Month award' from CIO Review for his leadership of EPI.

Being one of the thought leaders in the industry, he is a well sought after speaker on a variety of topics such as mission critical data centre, IT service management, electro-magnetic fields and other topics in which he is well versed.

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