QA Ltd

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.[8]

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,[9] 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.[10] Later, QA Ltd went on to acquire competitor companies Xpertise Group, Remarc Group and Aikona Management,[11] before refinancing to the tune of £50m in 2014.[12]

QA is made up of four key divisions:

• Learning and training: Providing training from courses and certifications to wider learning and managed learning services. Programmes offered include Cyber Security, Agile, DevOps, Project Management, Leadership and Digital Transformation.[13][14]

• Apprenticeships: Courses range from GCSE to degree level featuring face-to-face, online and real-world workplace training.[15][16]

• Higher Education: 88 higher education programmes are on offer with partnerships from Northumbria University, Solent University, Ulster University, Middlesex University and the University of Roehampton.[17] Courses range from foundation level to postgraduate degrees.

• Consulting Academy: Launched in 2011, the academy is made of graduates who are on a 12-16 week intensive academy course in enterprise technology and meeting skills gap demands for customers.[18]

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.[19][20][21] 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.[22]