SmartForce, formerly CBT Systems, will make its e-business training available to the local market in October and says it expects large demand from companies that have to quickly adapt staff to the new economy.
Paul Henry, international VP, says SmartForce is facing unique challenges in SA.
"The bandwidth problem as well as infrastructure problems have been cause for concern for the local division, but I don`t foresee this being the case for too much longer," says Henry.
"We have faced problems delivering our interactive audio and video offerings down smaller pipes in SA, but as the infrastructure becomes more elegant and compact, those problems will disappear and local companies will benefit from our full offerings."
According to Henry, the new e-business courses have been well received internationally.
"We have partnered with some of the big consulting firms, including KPMG and PricewaterhouseCoopers. They have taken our modules, installed them and made their money from the resulting consulting spin-offs," he explains.
SmartForce says it can offer over 1 000 IT courses over the Internet and has partnered with most of the big industry players, including Microsoft and Linux.
In March, SmartForce was selected by Microsoft to provide ongoing training for Microsoft-certified professionals worldwide.
In July, SmartForce announced a curriculum that supports the Linux certification paths being defined by the Linux Professional Institute.
Henry believes the dual partnerships will not cause any conflict for SmartForce. He sees the company conducting multi-partnerships as a way of placing it ahead of its competition which still tends to specialise in a single platform offering.
SmartForce has tried to differentiate itself from competitors by offering students virtual seminars, round the clock access to mentoring and white papers.
Local MD Milton Goldschmidt is confident the e-business offering will be very well accepted.
"We are very excited by our e-business course and given the amount of e-commerce start-ups in this country, we foresee a huge market for the course," says Goldschmidt.
"One of the most important things to remember in e-business is that the whole company must be comfortable with the new way of doing business; training must happen across the board."
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