Edinburgh, UK-based Axios said it had taken the decision to withdraw from the certification scheme to avoid confusion caused by its position as both a certified company and an IT service management software vendor.
Axios was awarded BS15000 certification in February following an audit by KPMG, becoming the first company to be certified against the standard, which is based on the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) and is designed to promote an integrated set of processes for the effective management and delivery of IT services to meet business requirements.
That sparked confusion among the industry as to whether Axios’s internal processes had been certified or its assyst help desk and IT service management software solution. The answer was the former but clearly the company’s internal use of assyst helped it achieve that certification, and the company’s understandable marketing of that fact did not help to reduce the uncertainty.
In order to clear up any confusion the company has decided to withdraw from the certification scheme. The discord which has arisen within the ITSM community surrounding the scheme and our position in it has led us to conclude that the most responsible action we can take is to unilaterally resign our accreditation in order to restore industry harmony, said managing director, Tasos Symeonides, in a statement.
The company’s BS15000 project director, Brian Kerr, told ComputerWire that Axios’s withdrawal should give a clear indication to other IT service management product and service vendors that products will not be accredited in their own right.
Axios will continue to support both the itSMF and BS15000, Kerr said, indicated by its recent support for the launch of the Australian equivalent, AS8018, and will continue to follow the BS1500 standard to show that it practices what it preaches.
