New Horizons is the latest entrant in the Indian IT training segment. Thomas J Bresnan, chief executive and president, New Horizons Worldwide Inc, shares his views about the Indian market and his strategy for this market, with Gaurav Patra

How critical is the Indian market for New Horizons?
We are the leader in the world marketplace today. Though we have presence in 49 countries, the Indian market is very important for us. Incidentally, India is the largest potential market where we were not present. And to maintain our leadership position in the global marketplace, we need to have our presence in India. Worldwide, the market is growing at around 7 percent and the Indian market is growing at a rate of 16 percent. We see India as the back office of the world in many ways, in terms of providing services and skills. Our target is to open centres in five or six metros along with the parallel process of franchising. In another three to five years we are looking at 100-150 locations across the country.

What are the new products you are offering?
New products and programmes are vital to the growth of our company. Even without market drivers from new software rollouts, we launched new product offerings in 2001. First of these in-demand offerings is Information Security. Corporations around the world are focusing more time, attention and resources on the issues surrounding information security. To reach this burgeoning market, we initiated an Information Security Programme. This vendor-neutral offering contains two certifications that focus on the foundation of network defence: firewall and intruder detection.

The second offering is Convergent Technology. Industry experts project that the convergent technology market place will be a huge growth area over the next five years. In anticipation of the training needs of this rapidly emerging market, we are now offering Certified in Convergent Network Technologies (CCNT) courses to prepare students for the CCNT exams.

We have also launched Cisco training at many of our locations. Our Cisco course offerings provide instruction in Internetworking concepts and prepares students to support Cisco networks and devices.

We provide authorised training in Microsoft applications, far more than anyone else does in the world. Apart from Microsoft, we have tieups with all the major vendors like Sun, Novell and Cisco. We want to be vendor-neutral. We want to give customers what they want, what their choice is, particularly in the corporate marketplace.

What certification programmes do you plan to offer to your Indian customers?
We will be offering Microsoft certifications, be it Microsoft Certified System Engineer or Microsoft Certified System Administrator. We will also be offering other certifications like Network Plus, Oracle certifications and Linux certification under the RedHat brand, among others.

There are several training companies present in the Indian market place. How do you differentiate New Horizons from others?
We focus on integrated learning. This is a blended approach to training that offers classroom instruction with e-learning and a wide range of products and services to assess, reinforce, support and validate the transfer of knowledge and skills to ensure success for the individual and the organisation. We have the ability to deliver training through a combination of methods that includes high-quality resources, whether in a traditional classroom or over the Internet. We think our integrated approach differentiates us from the rest. Although we have had a tough time in the business, we continued to invest in developing the integrated learning strategy. We are not just focused on retail or individual customers, but also want to be focused on corporate customers. Unlike the US, the market in India is very retail-oriented. But, there is still very important corporate business that we plan to target.