Mile High Research's Denny Schall Highlights Fast Lane

Sunday, July 26, 2009

Award Winning Authorized Education & Training Provider - Fast Lane

In todays post, Denny Schall connects with Fast Lane's Chuck Terrien, President of Fast Lane Americas and Torsten Poels, Executive VP at Fast Lane.

The 13 year old Berlin Germany based organization holds authorizations from several IT education and training vendors including Cisco, NetApp, VMware, IBM, Ubuntu, HP, Cisco Ironport, Symantec, Sun, Check Point and Citrix. Fast Lane offers education and training services in all major cities (Americas, Europe, Russia, Middle East/Africa, AsiaPac, Japan), plus has a partner network that adds 40 plus countries to their total geographic coverage. With annual training volume of approximately 25,000 students, Fast Lane generates $80M (USD) in annual revenues with a staff of 350 (FTEs) including a sales-force of 100 people. Fast Lane delivers learning services that include ILT, Webex-based Delivery (Instructor-led Online), Content Design and Development, Remote Labs, Content Distribution, Web Portal, Mentoring and LMS Managed Services.

Fast Lane has achieved the following awards over the past 12 months

• Cisco Innovation Partner of the year 2009 in Japan
• Cisco European Learning Partner of the Year 2009
• Cisco Innovation Partner of the year 2009 Europe
• Cisco Learning Partner of the year 2009 in Africa
• Cisco Global Innovation Partner of the Year 2009
• Cisco Learning Partner of the year 2009 Emerging Countries (Latam, Russia and CIS, Central and Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa)

What makes Fast Lane a great partner for Authorizing Vendors?

Fast Lane has over 150 years of Executive Management experience in the Authorized Vendor Industry – mostly with Cisco. Also, Fast Lane is the only Cisco and NetApp partner that has WW coverage. No other Learning Partner can cover Advanced IT Training on a WW basis. Fast Lane embraces a partnership model that allows our partners to not only grow the training reach of Fast Lane (and our Vendor Partners) but they are also a Brand extension of Fast Lane. Fast Lane can take on new roles and responsibilities for our Vendor Partners including Customer, Partner and Employee deliveries, Content Development, Logistics and Student Interfacing activities. And Fast Lane can grow the business faster than other companies.

"Fast Lane grew the WW NetApp business by over 400% in the first year of Authorization and had at least doubled the business every year since" - Torsten Poels, Executive VP at Fast Lane.

What differentiates Fast Lane from other education and training providers?

Fast Lane is capable of doing the most difficult and complex technical courses in the Industry in 14 Languages.

Cisco - Fast Lane was selected by Cisco to deliver:

• Advanced Services Training (exclusive outside the US/Canada),
• The latest Unified Computing Solution Training (WW),
• Ironport Training (only WW partner)
• Advanced Technical Program (ATP) and Emerging Technology Program (ET) Courses – Development and Delivery – numerous exclusive arrangements
• Fast Lane was awarded a 3 year contract to develop and maintain Cisco’s new CCNA/CCNP Curriculum
• Fast Lane developed multiple Data Center courses for Cisco
• Fast Lane developed multiple Wireless courses for Cisco

NetApp - Fast Lane was selected exclusively by NetApp to deliver:

• DataFort, Oracle, Operations Managers and Virtual Tape Library courses
• Fast Lane designed and developed multiple courses for NetApp including: Oracle, Operations Managers, MicroSoft and other Certification Courses
• Fast Lane developed its own VMware on NetApp course and delivers it worldwide

Fast Lane has the largest IT Training Remote Labs hosted on 3 continents and can support over 3500 classroom students per day across 3 time periods.

Fast Lane has its own software development team that is responsible for its own state-of-the-art LMS/Registrations system, a Website that supports 14 languages and multiple currencies, and a separate Community Website that supports Fast Lane’s WW customers

Fast Lane’s Instructors also consult such that they are able to bring real world experiences to the classroom

The content we deliver is reviewed and updated by a WW Technical Team to ensure that we have our best Technical people working on their areas of expertise that result in a better experience for our customers.

Why do customers choose Fast Lane for their education and training needs?

Because Fast Lane can deliver training and consulting on the most difficult and state-of the-art technologies Fast Lane is able to create innovative and creative Learning Solutions that are more cost effective than our competitors. We can deliver Training Solutions that are consistent around the world and in a more cost-effective way. Finally, our proven track record and WW experience assures our customers that they are going to get the highest quality experience with the most effective results.

How does Fast Lane measure customer satisfaction?

We use Metrics-That-Matter (MTM) for all course evaluations. Every evaluation is reviewed and those few that do not meet our strictest of standards are discussed with the student and any appropriate action will be taken. We have guarantees that assure that the customer will be satisfied. Two of the criteria for being selected by Cisco as a Learning Partner of the Year were for Outstanding Customer Service results and for consistently high quality scores.

What is Fast Lane's forecast for the education and training business over the next 6 to 12 months? We forecasted double digit growth overall for 2009 and nothing has changed our outlook. Some regions will see as high as 70% year over year growth and the worst regions is projected at 12% year over year growth. Our business which focuses on more advanced technologies requires significant investment on our part on an ongoing basis. However, these technologies also tend to be more “mission critical” to our Customers and therefore less prone to swings in the economy.

To see the complete article, visit Mile High Research