IT training provider, Excom Education, has gone into liquidation.
A meeting was held to decide the fate of the company on August 25. Excom directors Paul Koukounaras and Graeme Newey, have taken the step to wind up Excom and have appointed liquidators Roger Grant, Victor Dye and Nicholas Giasoumi from Dye & Co.
The liquidators have not responded to calls for comment at the time of publication.
According to documents obtained from ASIC, it lists the Commonwealth Bank and its wholly owned subsidiary, CBFC as its chargees.
The training company shut its doors across the nation. Industry figures were saddened by the development.
Techno Phobia's Andrew Morison said he was doing a course at the Excom centre in Sussex Street when he arrived to find it locked with the notice on the front doors.
"All we have been told is that the company is in the hands of administrators," he said.
Excom was an authorised training centre across vendors such as Novell, Cisco, Citrix, Microsoft and VMware.
Novell vice-president of alliance and channels, John Donovan, said it was unfortunate news and it would be able to cover its training through its partner community and its own training staff and consultants.
According to Australian Computer Society CEO, Bruce Lakin, the closure is a major negative for the Australian IT industry.
"It will put a hole in local IT training because it was a reputable and capable organisation that provided terrific service to the ICT sector for some time," he said. "Without any question there will be a gap that needs to be filled and a level of expertise that we can ill-afford to lose."
Rival training college, Dimension Data Learning Solutions (DDLS), has offered to take on all Excom students and allow them to complete certification courses at no extra charge above what they've already paid.
"If they bring across their courseware and course confirmation from Excom then we'll allow them to sit on the DDLS course the next time we run it," DDLS director, David Gage, he said.
"We're conscious of the fact that there are a significant number of students and staff impacted by this closure so we just want to make sure there's continuity in the IT training industry."
But Gage said he would not take over the controversial 100 per cent job offer promise made by Excom to Express IT students.
"We're not taking on the Express IT program," he said. "This is really about certification programs that students have started to undertake."
Gage also called on former Excom teachers to apply for positions with his company and said DDLS would be expanding.
"We've commenced that process today and will definitely have some plans to expand our business," he said. "We're in a unique position to scale our business quickly so we'll do that over the coming weeks."
More to follow.
