Three Factors to Help You Choose the Right Cloud-Based Training Provider

Any winning solution improves productivity while makingthings easier and simpler—it’s a given. After all, that’s what technology isall about—helping us become more efficient while adjusting to our rapidlychanging environment.

A winning cloud-based training solution is no different

With the globalization of our economy, the reliability andefficiency of corporate training solutions is crucial. Organizations are keen toinvest in effective training solutions for globally scattered employees whilekeeping requirements low for resources, including time, money, and staffing.

This is the strong point that virtual cloud-based trainingsolutions are currently bringing to the training industry “table.” However, notall providers are delivering on that promise.

Now, you can imagine the frustration you, as a trainingexecutive, would undergo when sifting through the crowded market of cloud-basedofferings. Browsing the many methodologies and brands can give you a headache.Along with the competing claims from providers, concerns about latency, lack ofcontrol, poor support, and a bad fit with the company’s IT needs make your jobharder. Although the best provider is often the one that suits your specificorganizational needs, there are a few common characteristics to consider whilesearching for the best solution. Here are three of them.

What to look for

1. Configuration support

Make sure you know what’s required of you before committingto a provider. The ideal provider should meet your needs, not the other wayaround. Some providers require recoding or architectural changes in youroperating systems. But this is completely unnecessary. These providers aresimply making their lives easier instead of yours. There is no need to changeor re-route your existing on-premise software, your exact IP addressing,protocols, or storage connectivity—in fact, they should all remain as they are.Providers who run only on open-source Linux hypervisors may limit support forany other operating system or virtual machines, in order to cut their costs.

2. Scalability

Consider why we use cloud-based training solutions to beginwith—this virtual training technology allows us to efficiently reach andsupport a changing number of students all around the world. That meanscloud-based training solutions should be able to easily scale from one to 50 studentsin no time, allowing them to log in for various controlled time periods tofollow the class.

So how do you make sure your provider allows you to easilyscale?

• Ensure your provider has highly elastic serverprovisioning that can scale from one to 50 and then back to 10, in just a fewclicks of the mouse.
• Check their software licensing to avoid blockedsessions.
• Make sure the system can track, de-provision,and delete expired student lab training environments, and that your IP andbudget are kept safely. That way you won’t find yourself paying for unusedservers or live environments going around the web.

Scalability also means you’ll be able to support thosescheduled classes for any length of time and any number of students.

Remember the “olden days,” when you had to rent out a room,purchase computers in advance, have the team work on the class’s configurationand networking, upload the material, etc.? If the class was canceled or peopledidn’t show up, that was your problem, as everything had already been paid forin advance. If more students showed up, you couldn’t accept them, as you couldn’tprovide them with computers.

But those days are long gone, and cloud-based training-labproviders should now allow you to “schedule and forget”: when invitations arealready sent and servers are prepared, provisioned exactly for each student,and scheduled to de-provision after the session—there are no money losses, noclean-ups.

3. High level of control

Over-the-shoulder teaching is almost mandatory today if weexpect true progress while training faraway students. This truly vitalinteraction between teacher and student allows real case-by-casetroubleshooting and student progress visibility.

So, what should you expect from your cloud-based provider?

• Reporting tools, detailed technical access tousage insights, and analytics to monitor student progress, their level ofengagement, content effectiveness, etc.
• Support in granular hierarchy of permissions bystudent, group, business division, etc., to control access and views
• Private-label branding to present your virtualtraining classroom as an extension of your organization
• Control over a student’s desktop to providereal-time assistance

Having a high level of control over your training also meansproviding instructors with their own training infrastructure, independent of ITand completely self-sufficient. A truly powerful cloud-based remote classroomexperience should feel as close to a physical classroom as possible, notcompromised by IT provisioning delays or logistics issues.

Summing up

Cloud-based virtual training has the potential to improveyour training effectiveness substantially. But that requires choosing the rightprovider based on these three criteria: configuration support, scalability, andhigh level of control.

These characteristics are vital for a consistent, reliable,and flexible training environment that will make the training process easierand simpler. Well, that’s just what cloud-based solutions are supposed to do.

If your cloud-based training provider meetsthese three characteristics, you’re on the right path. Now it’s time to takeyour training to the next level and use the latest learning techniques toincrease student engagement, maximize training effectiveness, and improveorganizational productivity.