Orca Technologies, Computer Configurations Holdings` (CCH) data storage manufacturing company, has been awarded the CE mark by the SABS. Orca Technologies may now display the mark on all its Orca external data storage systems.
The Orca range was required to comply with standards set by three European quality standards bodies, all administered through the SABS. All electronic equipment sold in the European Community have to comply with the following standards:
Safety of Information Technology Equipment
Electromagnetic Interference
Electromagnetic Compliance
"To achieve compliance, Orca used external consultants for each of the three compliances to test, recommend changes to obtain compliance, retest after change, and repeated until compliance achieved," says Orca Technologies MD Bill de Beer. "At that point, the SABS, which is the authorised agent of the certification bodies, certifed compliance with each of the standards."
The granting of CE status is the final stage in the company`s plan to bring the data storage solution to international standards. CCH executive chairman Mario Pinheiro says the company will now go ahead with plans to appoint distributors in the United States and the Middle East.
"The Orca range is a fine example of the quality of work and the level of innovation present in South Africa. The system was designed by our own technologists and electronics engineers, and is manufactured and assembled locally. There are several design features on the Orca which make it a high-value offering, yet it has the performance, scalability and price advantages that business expects from CCH."
The Orca range was born some four years ago when CCH imported systems to support its Intel-based server range. Pinheiro says it was found that improvements could be made to the reliability and ease of support of these systems.
"The product quality was unacceptable, and we found that international support response times did not allow CCH to provide customers with the support they had come to expect from us. We had a huge depth of expertise in the NT and Unix arenas, and we found in Winder Controls a collaborator with the electronic engineering knowledge to implement our ideas.
"The Orca product, therefore, is a wholly South African design, with distinctive features such as the modular backplane. We use local manufacturers of power supplies, circuit boards and enclosures, with only the controllers and disks having to be imported."
In view of government`s local content programme, Orca Technologies has incorporated a black upliftment and development programme into its design and manufacturing process. Pinheiro adds: "This means that one of the first benefits of breaking into international markets will be the acceleration of our development programme for blacks and our ability to offer more employment opportunities, based on the increased demand for the product."
Pinheiro says Orca Technologies is in the process of identifying a new location on which to build a larger manufacturing plant to increase capacity. "Currently we are operating out of premises in Germiston which are rapidly becoming inadequate."
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