GE Access Sells Off Education Division, To Focus On Sun Business

"Our education centers were a geographically dispersed business across the [United States. Management will not be distracted by a small business that's really quite different than our distribution business," said James Walker, senior vice president of finance and CFO of GE Access. "A company like Exceed can do a better job with education and make it a more robust business than we had. It's good for us, good for customers and good for the people in the education centers."

Solution providers will still be able to sell vendor education and training courses formerly taught at GE Access' six education centers, which were sold to Exceed for an undisclosed amount of cash.

The sale allows GE Access to focus on distributing Sun Microsystems solutions, particularly in the security, networking and storage areas, Walker said.

"We wanted to put as much resources as we can in areas with the most growth potential," Walker said.

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In the past year, GE Access streamlined operations by dropping several vendor partners and laying off about 30 percent of its workforce as the demand for Sun products slowed because of the economy and dot-com collapses, industry observers said.

GE Access' sale of its education services was unrelated to those issues, however, Walker said. "There's been some downturn during the recession, but overall, the business over the past several years has been profitable. It's more of a focus issue for us than not having enough customers."

One solution provider was nonplussed by the sale of the training centers.

"What they offer was meeting my needs. I'll be happy if they just continue doing what they're doing," said Oliver Poppenberg, vice president of sales at Perfect Order, a Mechanicsburg, Pa.-based solution provider and consultancy. "My biggest question is whether Sun will still be on board with [Exceed, since the majority of my training is going to be on Sun."

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GE Access' James Walker said the company will resell courses through Exceed.

GE Access will continue to resell all previous courses for solution providers, which centered on Sun and Hewlett-Packard platforms, through Exceed Education, Walker said.

"Resellers are still able to get the education they need through us. When someone wants a course, they will register with a vendor and take it at the most convenient location. That's not going to change," Walker said. "We're still going to resell education to our resellers. We're still going to distribute education from Sun, Veritas [Software and others. If anything, I think [solution providers may be pleased that we're no longer in the [education business because we won't be dealing with end users."

Geographic and vendor expansion is part of its growth strategy, said Gerald Rasmussen, CEO of Exceed parent Educational Services International. Exceed has an IBM education practice in the Midwest, he said.

"GE Access' geographic locations and the business model itself fits into our growth model," Rasmussen said. "Also, because they're a GE company, along with all the processes [acquired with the education division comes a strong management and instructor team."

Another Educational Services International subsidiary, TSG Education, was a founding partner of IBM Learning Services back in 1995, Rasmussen said. GE Access has no plans to distribute IBM courses, he said.

Solution providers can make as much as 15 percent margins reselling Exceed's vendor courses, said Ed Wilkes, president of Exceed.

"In the Sun catalog alone, there are hundreds of courses. There are instructor-led, CD-ROM and Web-[based learning courses. There's also education consulting," Wilkes said.

"Ideally, we believe we can offer a more diverse curriculum. If a reseller has some unusual customer needs, we can act as consultant to them to solve their customer's problems as it relates to education," he said.

The centers are located in Denver, Houston, San Francisco, Phoenix, Philadelphia and Edison, N.J.