Training companies still offer useful courses

Not so long ago, considerable training was required to use business applications. The exhibition halls at vendor conferences would be crowded with the booths of training companies willing to show you, at a price, how to unlock the mysteries of the F15 key.

Some time in the dying days of last century the enterprise software vendors woke up to the idea of "usability".

Web interfaces put paid to the idea that some arcane low-level programming language was required to drive a simple office PC. Then the vendors took it even further, making ways to integrate their software with common office packages like Excel and Word.

Most training companies went to the consultants' graveyard, buried under mounds of three-ring folders. However, a handful survive because, despite improvements in interfaces, most software packages are still complex and sophisticated pieces of engineering.

While an untrained user may be able to find their way around a system, a trained user can be much more productive.

Ace Training general manager Tony Skelton says as companies upgrade their technology, they realise some training needs to be built in to the process. "You can't just install it and not train staff. A day spent in the classroom can save thousands in lost productivity," he says. "It is essential when a corporate upgrades that its network managers and system administrators are fully trained in the new upgrade. There is still a lot of complexity behind the interface."

Ace offers courses in Microsoft and IBM technologies.

Competitor Auldhouse, which Telecom acquired as part of Gen-i, teaches Microsoft, Cisco, Citrix, Crystal, Unix and Red Hat Linux. Both companies offer the CompTIA A+ and Network+ certificates.

The third major supplier of IT training for corporates, New Horizons, went out of New Zealand in December when Eagle Technology dropped the franchise so it could concentrate on its growing systems-integration business. Ace took over some staff and the student database.

Other providers tend to offer more specialised courses, or courses of variable quality which are approved by the New Zealand Qualifications Authority and therefore eligible for government subsidy or training loans.

Oracle training is now done here by Asparona Education, while SAP training is done at a technical level by SAP itself or at a user level by implementation partners.
Skelton says Ace's most popular desktop courses are in Microsoft Excel, Project and even Word, for those people who need to make use of the program's rich media functions.

Training for graphics software, particularly Macromedia programs like Dreamweaver and InDesign, is also in demand, and on the technical side, there is a strong call for MCSE (Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer), MCSD (Microsoft Certified Systems Designer), and IBM WebSphere qualifications.

"In the IBM space, IBM is slowly merging its technologies like Lotus Notes, Lotus Domino, DB2 and Tivoli under the WebSphere platform.

"The sophistication and complexity of WebSphere is enormous and requires intense training for the systems administrators," Skelton says.

He doesn't believe there is a skill crisis. "There are sufficient people in the marketplace to meet most demands," he says.

There are issues about the number of students going into computer science at a tertiary level, but Skelton says private providers have a contribution to make there.

"A lot of people who want to get interested in computer science may need to test themselves with, say, MCSE, then go to university.

"There is no better well-rounded person in the industry than one with a practical as well as a tertiary qualification - we need to encourage that."

Ace now offers a diploma in computer science which is seen as a step up into tertiary study.

"They make very good students because they are mature and know the career they want to embark on. If you are not sure, you can start sinking once you get to university," says Skelton.