ITIL Accredited Consultancy Organization (ACO)

On a recent browse of Service Management web sites I found one making some misleading claims.

The company is a Prince2 Accredited Training Organization, Prince2 Accredited Training Organization AND an ITIL Accredited Training Organization.

Then you read the ITIL Consultancy summary on their web site. It is here the company makes a claim about being an Accredited Consultancy Organization. It is also where they say that they have been an Accredited Training Organization since 1997.

Of course the thing that they don't say is that they are an ACO in Prince2, not ITIL and the ITIL ATO program from APMG has only been around since 2006.

Now the clever writer has used wording in an attempt to dupe the public and their response to any complaint would be obvious, but let me point out the following:

At the time of writing there is no recognized Accredited Consultancy program for ITIL. There will be, it is coming - but it is not there yet. Whether the value of an ACO program will be adopted with any level of enthusiasm remains to be seen, but I can see that it is another great revenue raiser for the folks that control the program.