InformationWeek

Online Training For IS Pros

Technical training on the Web could become a $1 billion market by 2000

Edited by Marianne Kolbasuk McGee
Issue date: Jan. 27, 1997

The selection of online training solutions is growing for IS professionals who want to enhance their skills. One of the latest arrivals on the online training scene is San Francisco startup DigitalThink, which was launched this month and is funded by Texas Instruments, desktop publishing vendor Adobe Systems, and San Francisco investment firm Hambrecht & Quist.

DigitalThink is one of many companies that have started to offer online technical training in the past six months, vying for a chunk of a market that research firm International Data Corp. predicts will grow to $1 billion a year by 2000. Companies offering courses include product vendors such as Lotus Development and Oracle, training firms such as CBT Systems, and IT advisory firm Gartner Group.

Among the six IT-related courses DigitalThink offers are Java and C++ programming, says Peter Goettner, the company's president and CEO. The company plans courses on 45 to 65 additional topics. The courses are offered at
DigitalThink's World Wide Web site . They consist of live online seminars, online chats with classmates, threaded discussions, audio clips from instructors, and access to Web-based resources.

In addition to signing up students on an individual basis, DigitalThink will contract with companies that want to provide the courses to their empl oyees. On an individual basis, the tuition ranges from $40 to $350 per course.

Ellen Julian, an analyst who follows training trends for IDC in Framingham, Mass., says DigitalThink's courses are notable because they are often taught by experts in their fields. Among the instructors are Sun Microsystems engineer Ken Arnold, a member of the original Java development team, and C++ expert Ira Pohl, a professor at the University of California at Santa Cruz, says Goettner, a former Andersen Consulting analyst.

Bill Barnard, a test user for DigitalThink's Java and C++ courses, likes the convenience of online training. "You don't have to worry about hitting rush-hour traffic trying to get to your class on time," says the Chelmsford, Mass., independent software engineer.

In another example of the advance of online training, Canada's Software Human Resource Council, a nonprofit, government-affiliated organization, has a deal with Global Knowledge Network, a technical training provider in Waltham, Mass., to o ffer online courses to Canadian IT professionals at a 10% discount.

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