RedBrigade invests in skills for SA market

RedBrigade SA, based in Sunninghill, Rivonia has commissioned a "state of the art" training centre as part of its ongoing commitment to investing in the South African market.

"As a resource and services organization, we understand that our unique advantage lies in our ability to deliver intellectual capital," says Angus Young, Country Manager for RedBrigade.

"The demand diversity and quick adoption of technology in South Africa is the key driving factor behind our investment in training."

According to Young, the challenge lies in not just skilling people in base technology but in delivering training that is tailored to delivering complete solutions.

"For this reason we are putting a group of our employees through a 10-week training programme comprising Java, Java scripting and Enterprise Java Beans on the WebSphere Platform with emphasis on VAJ (Visual Age for Java)."

Developing revenue streams from training has never been part of the RedBrigade business model. "We created our training centre to enable any of our world-wide employees to upgrade their skills, however, we felt we could do more," says Young.

"We already have the infrastructure and content, therefore we are offering free Java training to the South African IT community. In particular we would like to see small companies and previously disadvantaged individuals benefit from this initiative."

Ajay Amrite, the course leader, says: "The courses are aimed at people who have at least one year`s programming experience, or who are at least conversant with C Language Syntax. Of course, knowledge of OOPS concepts, C++ programming, etc. would be an additional advantage."

"The courses will be run over 10 full days, and will introduce candidates to the fundamentals of the Java Programming language during the first few days before heading into complex concepts such as Interfaces and Enterprise JavaBeans."

In order to ensure the value of this initiative is realised in the market, we will be requesting IT managers to sanction the attendance of their employees, thereby committing to providing opportunities for their future development.

Young stresses that all students who attend the course will be armed with the knowledge and know-how to pass Sun Microsystems` Certified Java Professional examination.

They will be charged an administration fee of R350.00 (initially levied to cover the cost of training materials), which will be reimbursed to any delegate who successfully completes the certification within three months of attending the course.

Young explains, "It should be noted, that attending a similar course at any other training institution would cost as least R8000.00."