We are pleased to publish our eighth annual table of the UK Top 50 IT training providers.

How we compile this listing

As we have done in previous years, we gathered the revenues of companies with IT training businesses and excluded sales of training delivered outside the UK and non-IT related business from those companies that offer both types. We also exclude organisations whose revenue is derived principally from publicly funded training or from military/defence-specific IT training, training franchises whose revenues consist only of royalties and training brokers/portals.

Financial results for some of these organisations are on public record. In those cases, we have used the actual turnover figure for their most recently reported financial year. For organisations whose turnover is not published, we have made our best estimate based on the information available to us. For every company, we have indicated clearly whether the figure shown is an actual or an estimate. Actual (published) revenues are indicated as "A" - all estimates are marked as "E" in the Act/Est column.

Figures are UK revenues only, are rounded to the nearest £100,000 and relate to fiscal years ending in 2005 (i.e. accounts for the year ending sometime between 1 January 2005 and 31 December 2005) or cover the 2005 calendar year.

N.B. The 2004 revenues (used for last year's Top 50) of a few companies are now known to have been incorrect. We have not, however, altered those companies' 2005 rankings but the percentage change in revenue has been calculated on what we now believe last year's revenues to have been.

TOP 50 UK IT TRAINING PROVIDERS - 2006
Rank 2006		Company	FY2005 Revenue £m	Act / Est	Revenue change	Rank 2005
1		QA	27.1	A	3%	1
2		InterQuad Learning	26.6	E	30%	5
3		Learning Tree International	23.6	E	0%	4
4		Parity Training	22.5	E	-5%	3
5		IBM Education Services	19.0	E	-22%	2
6		SAP	18.1	A	9%	7
7		Oracle University	17.7	E	13.3%	9
8		Thomson NETg	16.2	E	0%	8
9		Computeach International	16.0	E	10%	-
10		Xpertise Training	15.3	A	16%	12
11		Azlan	15.0	E	2%	11
12		LogicaCMG	14.9	E	20%	13
13		PPI Learning	14.0	E	-1%	10
14		SkillSoft	12.8	E	16%	6
15		Training Synergy	10.3	A	140%	-
16		Sun Microsystems	10.0	E	-8%	14
17		Assima Group	10.0	E	59%	-
18		HP Education	9.0	E	10%	16
19		Global Knowledge	8.3	E	2%	15
20		Remarc Group	8.3	E	17%	18
21		New Horizons	8.0	E	11%	17
22		KnowledgePool	7.2	A	7%	19
23		The Matchett Group	7.1	A	18%	21
24		Third Force/Electric Paper	6.3	E	9%	22
25		The Training Camp	4.3	A	10%	24
26		Red Tray	3.7	A	810%	-
27		WDR	3.6	E	3%	27
28		Sage	3.6	E	0%	25
29		Key Training Solutions	3.5	E	0%	26
30		Red Hat	3.4	A	14%	29
31		Learn IT	3.2	E	23%	33
32		BT Training Solutions (NI)	3.2	A	4%	28
33		Computer Associates	3.0	E	7%	31
34		BroadSkill	2.9	A	29%	42
35		iTrain	2.9	A	11%	35
36		Steria Training Services	2.9	E	0%	30
37		Learning IT	2.8	A	17%	32
38		Fuel	2.8	A	73%	36
39		InTechnology	2.6	E	3%	37
40		WWP Training	2.5	A	8%	43
41		ILX Group	2.5	A	144%	-
42		Bytes Technology Group	2.5	A	24%	-
43		Host Computers	2.4	A	-1%	41
44		Kaleidoscope Training	2.4	A	32%	-
45		Deverill	2.3	A	92%	-
46		Happy Computers	2.3	A	28%	50
47		StayAhead Training	2.3	A	5%	44
48		Xansa	2.3	E	-10%	39
49		Ajilon Learning	2.1	A	6%	49
50		PremierIT	2.0	A	24%	34

Last year's Top 50 can be found here

Links to each of these companies' websites can be found on the Who's Who page.

Thank you

We would like to thank everybody - training providers and others - who has contributed to this project.

If you have any comments or if you believe any aspect of our information is inaccurate or incomplete please let us know by email or by calling IT Skills Research/Pardo Fox Ltd on 01483 454 363

IMPORTANT: This information has been carefully researched. However, we can not guarantee its accuracy or completeness, and we will not accept liability for any direct, indirect or consequential loss arising from its use.

Barrie Charles's commentary from the Top 50 article in IT Training July 2006

A year of change

It's been another year of growth, but not as we know it. The nature of who is being trained in what - and how - is changing, and suppliers who adapt to this shift are thriving. Barrie Charles reports

The UK IT training market continued to recover in 2005, posting a healthy growth of 9% over 2004, according to data from IT Skills Research. But behind this figure lies a fundamental shift in what customers want and expect from their suppliers. Five years ago, the major requirement was for technical training aimed at IT professionals, which made up perhaps as much as 80% of the market. Now IT user training takes a much bigger slice, and the main growth area for IT staff has been in professional and soft skills. So what’s behind these changes in demand? As IT becomes more fundamental to business and systems grow in sophistication, UK organisations are beginning to recognise that it pays to invest in user skills. At the same time, the amount of ‘must-have’ base technology has declined. Although Microsoft has brought out new software releases over the past year with SQL Server and Visual Studio 2005, the change from previous versions is not as great as it once was, and companies have become much more cautious about upgrading their systems.

Limited opportunities
Of course there are exceptions, and in the Cisco world there has been a big growth in the need for security and voice over IP skills. Changes to certification schemes have also helped fuel demand. In addition,Microsoft hopes that the next versions of Windows and Office, due out towards the end of the year or early in 2007,will provide a lift.
But another factor is militating against significant growth in technical training: the outsourcing of IT provision by organisations has reduced their need for technical staff. IT suppliers have economies of scale and therefore require fewer resources to provide the same service, especially as many of them are offshoring some activities to India and other countries.
On the other hand,there is a recognition that the IT function must manage projects better and needs to integrate more closely with the business. Hence the huge growth in courses covering areas such as project management, business analysis, systems design and interpersonal skills. Several of the top IT training suppliers that used to do only technical training now derive around a third of their revenues from such professional skills development.
As well as changes in who is trained and in what, fundamental shifts are also occurring in how the training is done. Blended learning continues to grow, with 57% of organisations now claiming to use the approach in at least some of their training, according to IT Skills Research’s survey of buyers completed in September of last year. This trend is echoed by the findings of the 2006 Chartered Institute for Professional Development survey which reported that 79% of respondents thought that learning and training now incorporated a much wider variety of activities.

Rising expectations
This is perhaps most evident in user training, where day-long, ‘sheep-dip’ training is a thing of the past and online elements, floor walking and short face-to-face sessions are on the rise. Increasingly training is customised, both at the organisational and the individual level.
One-on-one training, whether at the desk, in clinics or over the net, is growing in importance.
In the e-learning arena, long standard courses are no longer seen as the answer, with short on-demand modules becoming the order of the day. What some commentators are calling the ‘Google effect’ means that users want quick answers to their difficulties as and when they encounter them.
Virtual classrooms are also slowly gaining acceptance, especially in technical training. Global Knowledge now uses the approach routinely in single company programmes, while Thomson NETg offers a public schedule of courses and IBM is piloting a similar product. According to IT Skills Research, 27% of organisations now use virtual classroom techniques.
The other change in how training is done is that more and more organisations are outsourcing responsibility. According to the same survey, 7% of businesses have now outsourced all of their training to a single provider,with 29% using the approach for a part of their needs. A further 21% are considering the use of managed training services (MTS) in the future.

The effect on suppliers
Of course these trends have had a profound effect on training suppliers. In addition, the commoditisation of the market has continued, particularly with vendor technical training.The result is that several of the major providers that made their name in the space have faced serious profitability problems. Indeed, there are some signs that a major shakeout has begun.
So far in 2006, InterQuad has bid for QA, while Azlan Training was acquired by Global Knowledge to create Europe’s largest technical training company. Oracle’s purchase of Siebel was also completed earlier this year.
But, despite other consolidations over the past five years, the share of the market occupied by the top 10 suppliers has been in long-term decline, down from 57% in 2001 to 45% in 2005. This reflects the shift to user and professional skills training, which so far has tended to be provided by a large number of smaller suppliers.
As vendor course prices have fallen, ensuring tight cost control and a high utilisation of classroom and trainer resources have become vital. As a result, less popular courses have been dropped and sales effort and pricing deals focus on filling classes.
New business models have also emerged. Companies such as Training Synergy and BroadSkill,which operate large freelance trainer networks, are increasingly winning user training projects on the basis of their highly flexible resourcing capability and lower overheads.
Similarly, ‘resource light’ providers including Redtray and Bytes Technology Group are gaining share in the MTS market thanks to the discounts they offer and the services they provide over and above those offered by mere ‘training brokers’.

The Top 50
So what effect has all this had on our Top 50 table? Well, in fact, the top 5 are exactly the same as last year, if in a different order.However,with the exception of InterQuad,which continues to grow at an amazing pace, the average revenue growth of the other four is 6%.
Taking a wider look, the overall picture is of just a few players moving steadily up the table,while the remainder shuffle downwards or are in more serious decline. Only 10 providers have risen, but 26 have fallen.
This is partly due to the effect of new entrants jumping in quite high up the table: Training Synergy at number 15 and Redtray at 26. In addition, Computeach, a major training supplier to individual buyers, appears in our table at number 9 this year, thanks to its increasing focus on the corporate market. The other new entrants are ILX Group, Bytes Technology Group, Kaleidoscope Training and Deverill.
The fastest percentage growth in revenues was shown by Redtray, ILX Group,Training Synergy, Deverill, Fuel and Assima Group – all more than 50%. In terms of absolute revenues, InterQuad Learning, Training Synergy, Assima Group and Redtray went up the most. The largest fall in both percentage and absolute revenue terms was IBM, probably due to a single large project which moved off the books.
As far as places go, BroadSkill rose the most, while the largest fallers were PremierIT, Xansa and SkillSoft.
Gone from our table are Tata Interactive Systems, Getronics, Epic, AdVal, Eclectic Group and SAS Software. Also, DACG is now part of Assima Group, while PeopleSoft merged with Oracle. Please note as well that Spring IT Training is now known as PPI Learning.

Looking ahead
But enough of the past,what about the future? Most of the trends outlined above are likely to continue for many years, while the market looks set to show modest growth again. In a comprehensive survey of 1,000 organisations conducted by e-Skills UK, 19% of respondents expected to increase IT training spend in 2006, with only 3% foreseeing a decrease. Again, user training is expected to take a larger share, with 14% seeing growth in this area, compared to 9% planning more technical training.
IT Skills Research’s measure of confidence among training suppliers also reports growing revenues and profits for the first quarter of 2006.But, of course, some will fare much better than others.
How are your favourite suppliers managing and how do they stack up against the competition? Read on and find out.

© Haymarket Management Publications / IT Skills Research / Pardo Fox Ltd 2006