Business Challenge

A leading apparel manufacturer was replacing its networking equipment with a different manufacturer’s equipment, and needed to bring its IT staff up to speed quickly on the ins and outs of the new system it had chosen.  Though the staff was very experienced, the two systems worked quite differently.

Solution

Forsythe provided a week-long, dedicated class on-site at the manufacturer’s data center.  The instructional plan was complicated slightly by the fact that only some of the students had networking backgrounds, while others had experience in telecommunications.   However, the instructor asked many questions to determine the students’ knowledge levels and areas of instructional need, and tailored the class accordingly.  For example, based upon the response received, the instructor provided an introduction/refresher on the open system interconnection (OSI) 7-layer network reference model before moving onto specifics of the new technology being deployed.  In addition, because the class was held on-site and dedicated exclusively to the manufacturer’s staff, the flexibility existed to pause instruction and respond immediately if any urgent network issues arose in the data center.

Results

The class was very well-received by the students, and the manufacturer appreciated the convenience of Forsythe’s handling all the details.  The success of the first class led to a second, more advanced course on building scalable networks.  A third course, on building remote access networks, is currently being planned.

The manufacturer is pleased because they were able to begin getting more out of their new equipment much more quickly and efficiently than originally anticipated.  Furthermore, and thanks to the convenience of the on-site, dedicated class, personnel drain was minimized while the learning experience was optimized.