Training Muscles Beyond Tech Certification

One thing that hasn't changed, however, is the grumbling by solution providers over how much training and certification cost in fees, travel expenses and lost business opportunities.

"To charge for general training is completely absurd," says Michael Oh, CEO of Heavy Water, a New Rochelle, N.Y.-based solution provider that designs, implements and manages IT networks. "Is it another revenue stream for [manufacturers], rather than a channel development effort?"

There are signs that vendors are listening. They're making greater use of the Web and iPods to deliver cheaper, more convenient training to channel partners. Some are offering discounts on training fees, allowing channel partners to use market development funds to pay for training and even letting VAR technicians take certification tests without classroom training.

"We're getting away from the partner-training-as-a-source-of-revenue mentality pretty quickly," says Tom Kelly, vice president of NetApp University, Network Appliance's training organization.

Certification for installing and maintaining IT hardware and software is still at the core of most manufacturers' training regimens for partners, especially as IT products become more complex. But most solution providers work with products from multiple vendors, and meeting all their training and certification requirements can add up to big bucks, not to mention the opportunity costs of having technical staffers sitting in classrooms instead of working in the field.

Heavy Water, for example, resells or works with products from Check Point Software Technologies, Cisco Systems, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, Network Physics, Nortel Networks and others--more than a dozen altogether. In an interview late last month, Oh noted that a week earlier he had sent three engineers to Atlanta for training at Riverbed Technology, and three more were about to hit the road for training on Network Physics products. The cost? Upward of $2,000 per engineer per day in lost billings, $500 to $1,000 per employee in travel expenses and hundreds or thousands of dollars in class fees and testing.

Yet Oh will pay if the training provides value for his company. "Certification is a business need," he says. "Our reputation is based on our very strong technical expertise, and it's very important that we maintain that."

NEXT: How vendors are helping to defray those steep training costs.

To help defray those costs, vendors are unveiling interactive classes broadcast in real-time and "on-demand" training materials that channel partners can access at their convenience.

Microsoft inaugurated its Partner Learning Center portal two years ago, providing online classes and labs, documents and other content. Channel partner employees also use the portal to determine what training they need and to develop a curriculum, or "learning path," says Don Nelson, general manager of partner sales and readiness at Microsoft.

Cisco offers the Partner E-Learning Connection to supplement classroom training, says Liz Lawson, senior director of partner development and education. The portal, which gets 35,000 to 40,000 visitors per quarter, provides online mentoring, virtual classrooms, podcasts and what Lawson calls "quick-learn modules" on Cisco product configurations and other topics.

In classroom training, a great deal of time is generally devoted to the basics--to the nuts and bolts of wide-area networking, for example--before getting to the heart of the course material, NetApp's Kelly says. While that can be useful for less experienced technicians, it's a waste of time for senior engineers that want to get right to the new material. Offering prerequisite materials online, which let participants do whatever amount of preparation they need beforehand, can knock one or two days off a five-day course. "We really want to be sure that the classroom time partners invest in is strategic," Kelly says.

Training for the first level of HP's certified professional program is evenly split between classroom time and Web-based content, says Todd Owens, regional director of Americas field and partner training and certification at HP. But the curriculum becomes more classroom-intensive as partner technicians move up to higher levels of certification.

But online training has its limitations. Many channel partners sign up for IBM's online seminars and then fail to show up, says Kevin Hooper, director of worldwide channel enablement and marketing. Heavy Water's Oh thinks his staff gets more out of classroom training, which is often more hands-on.

Another approach is for vendors to bring training to their channel partners, either by touring or by visiting individual companies to provide lunchtime seminars. Oh says vendors Extreme Networks and Trapeze visit Heavy Water monthly with new product updates and focused training sessions.

On the flip side, there's always a danger of overloading channel partners with training requirements. As part of Sun's Partner Advantage Program, the vendor has certification requirements for partner sales, systems engineers, support and maintenance, and professional services employees.

"Partners want training on the fundamentals," says Bill Cate, senior director of Sun's global channel strategy. "How much is enough is kind of touchy."

Training is changing in other ways, too, aside from delivery method. Nowadays, it's often tailored to specific employees in specific jobs. And the range of content is expanding rapidly.

This year, Microsoft is cranking up its Partner Skills Plus initiative, with a $30 million budget, to increase the number of channel partner technicians trained to work with Microsoft products, especially new ones like Vista, Office 2007 and the upcoming Longhorn Windows server. The company expects to certify as many as 88,000 solution-provider employees this year, up from an average of 40,000 to 50,000, Nelson says.

Microsoft is also fine-tuning its technical certification efforts by designing training around specific jobs. Today, the vendor certifies developers, IT professionals and architects. But in the second half of this year, Microsoft will create a new, as yet unnamed certification level between IT Professional and IT Architect.

NEXT: How training is evolving along with VARs' roles.

As solution-provider roles change, so must training evolve. 3Com recognizes that, whereas the same technician once provided presales (system design, installation) and postsales (trouble-shooting and maintenance) service, that work today is likely to be performed by two different staffers. So the vendor is splitting its technical training and certification into pre- and postsales curricula. It has already done so for LAN certification and will do the same for WAN, IP telephony, security and wireless network training, says Wendy O'Brien, 3Com education director.

NetApp's philosophy is that certification, once the goal of training, is now just the entry point of its partner education efforts. Under the Technical Partner Advisor program begun late last year, senior NetApp consulting engineers work alongside channel partners in pre- and postsales situations in the field to assess resellers' abilities to design solutions for customers, says Leonard Iventosch, NetApp vice president of worldwide channels.

Also, Iventosch's organization is working with NetApp Global Services to develop packages of services that solution providers can resell, and designing training programs that will help channel partners do that.

Cisco's Lawson says the basic product training of the past "is just useless these days." The company is redesigning its partner curriculum, going beyond product technical certification for presales staff and including more training for designing, installing and deploying complete networks. "We have to give [channel partners] the integrated skills they need to deliver integrated networks," Lawson says. Cisco also is close to debuting a business curriculum for "soft skills," including business planning and selling at the executive level.

Other vendors, too, have gotten into the soft skills game.

In the past two years, more than 3,000 channel-partner execs in 35 countries have taken IBM's three-day courses in financial management, Hooper says. HP is putting together a selling skills curriculum, which it plans to debut later this year. And while Microsoft has offered sales and marketing training for some time now, the vendor's Partner Advisory Council last month recommended that it offer a formal sales-certification curriculum and training in other areas such as project management and customer needs assessment.

Third-party organizations such as the Institute for Partner Education and Development (IPED is part of the CMP Channel Group, which publishes VARBusiness) and CompTIA also offer training that goes beyond technical certifications. IPED, for example, has been offering solution sales training for Juniper Networks, Microsoft and Xerox channel partners.

Some vendors, however, are reluctant to offer training that goes beyond their products, thinking that business-skills training will help solution providers sell the competition, says Ryan Morris, IPED channel intelligence director. While that's certainly a trade-off the manufacturer has to weigh, Morris says vendors should consider the goodwill and partner loyalty that offering business-skills training can build.

Expanding training beyond product "speeds and feeds" into broader business skills certainly leads to more successful channel partners and more lucrative relationships for IT vendors, says Gartner analyst Tiffani Bova. But she's been hearing more complaints from vendors that, while solution providers are clamoring for more training, they aren't so quick to sign up. "The No. 1 reason I hear is time," she says.

Some vendors concur. NetApp's Iventosch says the company makes its employee sales training available to channel partners, but "we never get a real strong response."

"Vendors can't take it for granted that channel partners will take a few days out of the field to do this,"IPED's Morris adds. While he says solution providers want such training, vendors "have to convince them it's going to be worth their billable hours."

What's more, just how much of a burden training puts on channel partners differs from vendor to vendor. Most manufacturers (or the third-party training firms they contract with) still charge fees for certification training and testing. Cisco's classroom training, mostly delivered by third-party companies, costs an average of $2,500 per class, for example.

For some vendors, training is still a revenue stream. 3Com, for instance, operates its technical training operations on a profit-and-loss basis. But NetApp's Iventosch thinks most vendors are moving in the other direction. While NetApp charges for training, accreditation and certification, it allows channel partners to use MDF to pay for it. Microsoft provides vouchers to channel partners to help cover fees charged by third-party trainers, and Sun allocates training credits to authorized partners on a quarterly basis.

But even when course fees are waived, training is hardly free given travel expenses and high opportunity costs.

"I firmly believe that training and certification are less important than hands-on experience," says Alex Solomon, co-founder of Net@Work, a New York-based VAR. He says Net@Work's senior engineers can better train its junior engineers at a lower cost. "It would be better for everybody to take the money and put it into marketing programs and generate more business for us and the vendor."

Virtually all vendors offer their online training content, such as on-demand Webinars and courseware, for free. And most vendors that provide education in business-focused soft skills do so at no charge.

A growing number of vendors, including 3Com, NetApp and Sun, now allow solution-provider technicians already well-versed in a technology to take certification tests up front and, presuming they pass, skip unnecessary training. But some vendors still require that partners undergo training and take certification tests even when well-versed. Heavy Water's Oh says that's the case with Extreme Networks, which charges $4,000 to $5,000 a pop for its training. Such expenses can discourage VARs from offering more services, he says.

"That always seemed counterproductive to us," says Kenny Frerichs, president and CEO of Network Physics, which makes Internet traffic controllers and doesn't charge for training. "We want to make money with our partners, not off our partners."

Still, not all vendors can be expected to offer channel partners such a generous deal. The bottom line is that, whatever the cost, channel partners must recognize the value of the training they're paying for. That way, they'll feel like real partners and not just another revenue stream.

NEXT: A look at vendors' (not so) basic training offerings.

Vendors are providing new kinds of training and new ways to deliver it. Take a look:

• EMC: For sales-call preparation, short video-on-demand clips demonstrate how to have whiteboard conversations with customers on product architectures, solutions and strategies.
• HP: HP's new Partner Technology Readiness and Information Network (TRAIN) program shows new technical and sales hires at VARs "how to speak HP."
• NetApp: Under the Technical Partner Advisor Program, NetApp senior consulting engineers shadow partner engineers in the field, assessing their proficiency and providing advanced training.
• Microsoft: While many vendors offer training material online, Microsoft's Partner Learning Center portal is probably the most comprehensive, providing tools for skill assessment and developing an education program along with online classes, labs and materials.
• Novell: Novell Open Audio provides interviews with Novell technologists on such topics as "Securing Web applications with Novell Access Manager." Easy listening it ain't.