IT Learning One Step Ahead

But are domestic training majors in tune with the needs of the market? Or are they a step ahead? A look at the fast-paced arena of infotech education.

While ecommerce

and the internet are just beginning to affect the periphery of our lives, an

area which has been dramatically affected is the IT learning and education

business. And the reasons appear obvious. With information technologies setting

a blistering pace, leaving behind the best, the IT education and learning

business has been stretched trying to keep abreast and possibly even ahead.

Consider, just a year back, the

major hype in the education business was certifications. And Microsoft ruled the

roost. A Microsoft certification was the feather in the cap, a must have, an

easy ticket to the West. The year produced a colossal 80,000 certifications,

second to the US, with many students adorning multiple lapels. But the wave also

had its spill-outs. As TS Krishnan, Director, North & East, Microsoft India

describes it,"Though the novelty is gone, there is still a requirement of

650,000 software professionals in the country today. We want training to be as

commoditized as our products. And we don’t want our certifications to be an

exclusive club." From the end-user point of view, most agree that today the

maximum demand still continues to be for Microsoft, Oracle, Lotus and SAP

certified professionals. But the glut in Microsoft certifications has raised

concerns.

As SB Mahapatra, IS Manager, Tata

Johnsons Controls describes it, "Switching over from one product to another

has produced the jack of all tricks and master of none." Continues

Krishnaswamy Arvind of Numaligar Refineries, "The certified professionals

are neither certified nor professional. No amount of exams is going to replace

experience in systems implementation." Adds Balu Srinivasan, GM Systems,

Ford India, "Institutes need to focus on overall IT skills instead of just

technical certification courses." Points out Amit Shrivastava, Education

& Certification Manager, Microsoft India, "The early adopters and the

mainstream market, both jumped on to the bandwagon. And it was not just with us

but with everybody." Reacts SV Krishna, Director, Education, Oracle

Software, "The low price of Microsoft certifications has created the

problem. That is the reason why we have kept our pricing high." And it

appears as if Microsoft has learnt from the past and is making amends.

The bogey in the basket, the

Sylvan Prometric exams, have been reworked to focus more on assessing hands-on

and real-life adaptability skills. As Shrivastava of Microsoft describes it,

"We have changed the exams structure to focus on adaptive and simulative

testing." And the outcome? Again as Shrivastava puts it, "We want to

focus on premier status again. We do not really care about the number of

certifications anymore."

But the story this year is not

just about vendor certification courses. Certification courses are ‘in’ but

only when they are built around the technologies for tomorrow. And those

technologies appear to be ecommerce, web and internet engineering, Java, CRM,

object-oriented courses, and others. So the most significant change among the

domestic training vendors is that internet and ecommerce career courses now

silently dominate their offerings.

NIIT has created the iGNIIT

career course with an option for its students to invest in an internet PC with

long-term payback terms. Arena Multimedia has introduced its multimedia and web

engineering courses, and Aptech has come out with the eACCP and certified ecom

professional courses. However, the eMBA course from karROX Technologies at Rs3

lakh and the Java developer tracks from SRA Systems at Rs1.5 lakh are currently

among the highest priced courses. Also, E-commerce courses built around IBM

technologies with IBM certification are offered at IBM ACE and ATP training

centers.

Krishnan of Microsoft has another

way of looking at how IT education today can best serve businesses of tomorrow.

"Today, there is a need for certifications across solutions and less across

products," is how he describes it. And those solutions include knowledge

management, ecom and ebiz, CRM, and others. Extending this line of reasoning to

its logical conclusion, has led the company’s India office to undertake

globally the first Microsoft alliance with a training vendor. Microsoft India,

and Asset International, a division of Aptech Limited, have jointly launched

their knowledge management course, km@asset, and the Aptech Ecom Certified

Professional course, AECP. The course contents have been jointly developed by

Asset and Microsoft.

A large

repertoire of other training vendors are also offering ecom courses. These

include Bitech, BITS, CMC, Datapro, Edit Institute, ElNet3L, First Computers,

Kaashyap Radiant, karROX Technologies, Pentasoft, STG, Symbiosis, TechnoCampus,

Quantum Institute and Wintech Computers.

But are end-users satisfied with

the training being meted out to their prospective employees, especially with the

recent spate of ecom, ebiz and internet courses? Not really! According to

Mahapatra of Tata Johnsons, "The courses are more theory and less

practical." And regarding the changes brought about in training

curriculums, Mahapatra feels, "Very few reputed institutes are changing

their syllabus as frequently as the changing IT trends." Kishnaswamy of

Numaligar Refineries has a different point of view, "CRM and ecom courses

need to be taught as part of MBA courses. Java is more mundane and can be taught

anywhere." GV Satyanarayana, GM Technology at Electricmela.com, feels that

the current crop of ecom and Java courses is weak. "They are lacking in the

area of user categorization, concept fixing, and updation with technology."

In spite of the above

limitations, the demand for web and ecom professionals is rising so fast that

vendors themselves are spinning off training divisions. Take the case of Hewlett

Packard’s educational services. With HP-UX proving to be a stable platform for

scaling e-com and web solutions, there has been an increasing demand for

software specialists certified in this flavor of Unix. As Sunil Mehta, Education

Specialist, HP India describes it, "We started this initiative in India six

months ago. We find that HP-UX course is our best selling product and accounts

for 60% of our revenue." The business model that HP India is following for

its educational services is also quite different from others. The training

partner provides only the infrastructure to the principal, while HP markets the

educational services, is responsible for the sales, and even provides the

faculty. The partner gets a fixed sum irrespective of the number of students per

course, and therefore does not need to compromise on the quality of the

deliverable.

Another significant change

uprooting the foundations of traditional education is the mode of training.

While a lot has been talked about online and CBT-based training, it is only now

that we see these modes making significant inroads to replace instructor-led

training–the brick-mortar classroom. As R Krishnan, Senior Vice President,

Aptech Online, describes their OnlineVarsity, "Currently our virtual

classroom is meant only for domestic students. It is an independent division and

not linked to current brick-mortar operations." Moreover the fraternity of

Aptech’s Onlinevarsity comprises all paid students. And that is quite an

achievement. Krishnan plans to exploit the virtual varsity further by offering

both IT and non-IT courses.

Conceptualized in 1995, NIIT’s

Netvarsity has been around for a longer time. In 1996, Netvarsity offered

free-of-cost course registration and was rewarded by 65,000 sign ups, mostly

from the US. While the student fraternity has spread to other countries, the

basic issue of online training has not changed. As Suren Singh Raisily, VP

Education & Training, NIIT, describes it, "Just because we do classroom

training it does not mean that we know about net-based training. Online training

is not about content. It is all about learning services–it is about

interaction."

Another significant development

in training methodologies is the usage of CBT-based software. Tulec, a division

of Tata Infotech, which has an alliance with Smart Force (previously known as

CBT Systems), has deployed these solutions in software export organizations. As

Joseph Chacko, Senior Manager, Education Services, Tata Infotech spells it out,

"Skill enhancement packages are mostly meant for infotech companies."

And for Tata Infotech, TCS, Infosys and Wipro are currently the largest users of

CBT-based training.

In summary, the landscape for

infotech training and education is changing rapidly. Domestic vendors are being

pressed hard to include the latest technology trends in their curriculum. They

are also being tested to use the latest technologies for delivering courseware.

Lastly, the quality of their end product, namely the student, has to appeal to

the vast end-user markets for whose purpose they exist. Only the best will

succeed and survive.

Arun Shankar