When a customer says “It doesn’t get any better than this!” you have to believe you’re doing something right.
Any technology company can sell you a product, but Milestone Systems strives to ensure that your organization gains maximum value from that product. Milestone’s training programs provide a very tangible reminder of this dedication to true partnership.
Milestone is an authorized training center (ATC) for several of the products it sells, including F5 Networks, Cisco-IronPort, Palo Alto Networks, Blue Coat and Juniper. Milestone’s training enables customers to tap into Milestone’s deep technical expertise and learn the nuances that Milestone engineers have encountered in customer environments.
“One of the key things that differentiates our training from our competitors is that our instructors are field engineers,” said Paul Eck, Training Manager, Milestone Systems. “That means when they’re not training, they are out doing installs, doing presales and post-sales consulting, working with our customer installed base. And that goes for all the platforms for which we offer training.”
One student who is a network admin for a disaster recovery services company recently commented, “Real-world examples during the training classes are the most benefit. Thank you for adding as many as you did. It doesn’t get any better than this!”
“People in the IT industry want training because it helps them build experience and gain credibility in the industry, Eck explained. “It also helps them do their jobs and focus on things that are important. Sitting on the phone with the manufacturer’s help desk is not efficient. Milestone’s training helps IT professionals become more proficient and add more value to their organizations.”
Real-World Experience in the Classroom
Because all of Milestone’s training is certified, the curriculum is dictated by the manufacturer. However, Milestone’s instructors bring in real-world examples and utilize the hands-on lab experience to show how products work in particular environments.
“They’re able to bring experience into the classroom so they’re not just reading the textbook word for word and dictating it back to the students,” said Eck. “There are often scenarios where the book says to do it one way, according to best practices, but we have found a better way to do it when you have a certain kind of environment. That can save administrators a lot of time and frustration.”
The proof is found in the comments students write on the evaluation form after one class. Randy R commented, “This was one of the best classes I’ve taken. Material was very good and to the point. The instructor was extremely knowledgeable and had lots of real world experiences to help us understand the importance of the topics.”
Senior engineer/instructor Tom Olson teaches courses on Cisco IronPort’s Email Security Appliance (ESA) and Web Security Appliance (WSA). His classes have a significant lab component in which he teaches students the idiosyncrasies of those products.
“Most of our classes are 50 percent lecture and 50 percent lab, while some of the advanced classes are 30 percent lecture and 70 percent lab. There are so many things going on in these boxes, you’re not going to be able to optimize it if you just grab the user’s manual. That’s why the hands-on component is so important,” Olson said. “We do a lot of troubleshooting in the labs so students can see how to go about isolating problems. We point out things we’ve seen in the field and tell the stories that go along with them — without revealing who the clients are, of course.”
‘Go-To’ Experts
Olson teaches in cities around the country, including Washington, D.C., Boston, New York City, Chicago and Minneapolis. While most of Milestone’s training engagements are east of a line from Minnesota to Texas, the firm has conducted training in 48 states.
“We can also go onsite and provide custom training for our enterprise customers that have an entire team supporting a particular technology,” Eck said. “It’s still certified training but it’s customized for the customer’s environment.
“A lot of customers choose our training because of relationships outside the classroom. Customers seek us out for training because we are the go-to people for the technologies we represent.”
Milestone decided to offer training almost a decade ago as a complement to its professional services and product sales. Eck says training is simply a natural offshoot of Milestone’s core business strategy.
“We like to position Milestone as the best in the industry for what we sell, and training helps us achieve that,” he said. “We can sell you the product, and we can install it, but we want to do the knowledge transfer and ensure that you’re getting the most out of your product. These solutions aren’t cheap — we don’t want to just drop it off and hope that you’ll figure out how to use it. Our training programs expose students to the experience our engineers have gained in the field so that they can help their organizations get the most from their technology investments.”
Find a course: http://www.milestonesystems.com/training/
Get a quote on customized training: http://www.milestonesystems.com/training/quote/
