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QA Ltd is a national training company based in the UK but providing training to organisations all over the world. The company provides IT, business management and project management training for individuals and organisations. It is an accredited training provider for ITIL and an approved trainer for the ISO/IEC 20000 Standard (the first international standard for IT service management). It provides certified qualifications for the Association for Project Management and the Project Management Institute as well as Prince2® qualifications.
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History
In 1985 three former Intel employees - Mike Cheeseman, Jim Watt and Howard Kornstein - formed QA Training Ltd. The name came from a combination of Queen Anne House in Cirencester and the term Quality Assurance. In the early days, the company rented office space in the Cirencester Park Estate, where the Earl Bathurst was the company's landlord.
Shortly afterwards, QA Ltd began to provide technical training for IBM's European staff. In the early 1990s IBM acquired 10% of QA Ltd and co-opted Howard Ford to the company's board.
In the following year, 1991, the company made investment plans to grow by around 30% before its performance was significantly hindered, with IBM reporting an unprecedented loss of US$5bn in the last quarter of 1992 alone, coupled with the negative effects of the global recession and the Gulf War. It was a survival period for QA Ltd, but the company emerged and went on to acquire the training division of CapGemini, enabling it to develop Business Analysis products and partnerships in several other geographies. In 2006 QA Ltd was bought by Interquad and became QA-IQ. Later, QA Ltd went on to acquire competitor companies Xpertise Group, Remarc Group and Aikona Management, before refinancing to the tune of £50m in 2014.
Partnerships, Memberships and Accreditations
Awards
QA has been recognised as the winner of the 2015 Microsoft Worldwide Learning Partner of the Year. Selected from a set of more than 2,300 entrants from 108 different countries, the award recognises QA for demonstrating excellence in innovation and implementation of learning solutions.
Cyber Security
In recent years, QA Ltd has participated in the growing public debate around cyber security issues, making public statements about the growing importance of cyber security as a professional IT discipline. In 2014, Computing Magazine joined forces with QA Ltd to launch the publication's "Securing Talent" campaign, to highlight the skills gap in IT security in the UK.