QA Ltd


QA Ltd is one of the UK’s digital education and skills providers with a presence in technical, management and other associated professional skills. The company is currently involved in providing education and training within consulting, apprenticeships, higher education and learning. It is an accredited training provider for ITIL and an approved trainer for the ISO/IEC 20000 Standard. It provides certified qualifications for the Association for Project Management and the Project Management Institute as well as Prince2 qualifications.

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.

Products and Services

QA is made up of four key divisions:
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.