Academia has no intention of sitting in the corner under a dunce cap while dot-coms tap E-learning's revenue potential. Alliances between universities and E-learning vendors continue to move the academic content beyond the institutions' hallowed halls and into the business world.
Last week, the University of Wisconsin's Learning Innovations unit and E-business consultant Berbee Information Networks Corp. allied to extend the market reach of Learning Innovations' content-customization services. The partnership will target midmarket companies, with Berbee providing hosting, technology support, and integration of Lotus Development Corp.'s LearningSpace technology. Learning Innovations will focus on the content.
"It [used to be], 'Here's our course, take it or leave it,'" says Gartner Group analyst Clark Aldrich. Now, customization has become a top priority for many of the university-branded E-learning providers, he says.
When shoe retailer Famous Footwear Inc. in Madison, Wis., selected Learning Innovations to create an online training program for new salespeople at more than 800 stores, it was impressed by the university unit's knowledge of LearningSpace and its ability to customize training. It was very important for the company to have training that it could create and keep in-house, says Susan Miller, Famous Footwear's director of training. In the past, the retailer used online training that belonged to an E-learning provider. "They had codes we couldn't modify," Miller says. "We didn't want to go down that road again."
When it came to providing instruction with real value, many providers just didn't make the grade. "They had lots of eye candy, but no real method behind it," Miller says.
Famous Footwear wanted a program that introduced new employees to its corporate culture, which emphasizes customer service, Miller says. Because the retailer encourages salespeople to move continuously among customers on the sales floor, Learning Innovations developed an interactive game in which users move around on a virtual sales floor, attending to customers and asking them a series of questions. Since the program takes care of the fundamental content, Miller says, it frees up managers to spend more time showing trainees how to apply what they've learned.
--Sandra Swanson
Microsoft On Schedule With Windows 2000 Follow-Ups
After Windows 2000's more than three-year delay, any Microsoft release looks timely. When the company shipped its network operating system in February, it heralded a new generation of software that large businesses can trust to run their most vital applications-all due within a year. By and large, Microsoft is on schedule.
Windows 2000 DataCenter Server, slated for release this week, puts Windows on eight-way and larger servers from Compaq, Fujitsu, Unisys, and others. Also this week, Microsoft will disclose that it has begun manufacturing CD-ROMs containing its SQL Server 2000 database, with availability set for late September.
Customers seem eager for the new products. "Oracle has a more mature database with more developed features, but I no longer think Oracle is bigger and faster," says John Thompson, president of Crossmark Performance Group, the IT arm of Plano, Texas, retail sales and marketing company Crossmark Inc.
Microsoft last week also released an eagerly awaited service pack for Windows 2000 and started testing a new Web app-management product, Application Center 2000. That software, along with the new Exchange Server 2000, Host Integration Server 2000, Commerce Server 2000, and others will be unveiled Sept. 26. Lagging behind schedule is BizTalk Server 2000, a product for running business-to-business exchanges; it's currently slated for a fourth-quarter release.
Microsoft, already involved in an antitrust case in the United States, now has legal trouble on both sides of the Atlantic. The European Union last week opened an antitrust case against the company, saying Microsoft abused its PC operating-system dominance to gain leverage in the server market. The EU's filing came in response to a complaint by Sun Microsystems that Microsoft breached antitrust rules through discriminatory licensing and withheld information.
--Steve Konicki
