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Article from El Paso Inc. - 8/28/2011
Credit to El Paso Inc. - Link to Original Article
IT school sets up shop in El Paso Offers ‘ethical’ hacking training for Fort Bliss
By Robert Gray
Original article published 8/28/2011
A school that bills itself as the largest independent IT training company in the world has opened a permanent location in El Paso.
New Horizons has offered training in El Paso since 2006, but only intermittently and at the request of companies here, flying in instructors and holding the training at hotels or at company offices.
But the school recently partnered with the Region 19 Education Service Center in El Paso and has leased 2,000-square-feet at the facility where it will offer certifications, according to Robin Kennedy, who is in charge of New Horizon’s Southwest region.
She says she will also hire two instructors in El Paso.
Barbara Walker, territory account manager for Cisco in El Paso, says it’s a real boon to the region to have such technical training available in El Paso.
Cisco outsources its training and has had to fly instructors into El Paso to service its clients.
“Now I can skip a step. I can say, ‘Hey, we have one here.’ That is what it means to me to have someone local,” she says.
Besides Cisco, the school has trained employees at other major El Paso companies like Helen of Troy, El Paso Electric and even Fort Bliss.
Kennedy also sees a lot of potential across the border in Juárez to train maquila employees, especially since the New Horizons center there closed a couple years ago.
“Technology is no longer a separate thing, but now an enabling layer below any business,” Walker says.
Hackers in white hats
The certifications offered by the school run the gamut, from various Cisco certifications to Microsoft certifications and classes on Excel and Word to Six Sigma and project management courses.
During the last two weeks of September, New Horizons will offer training in ethical, or “white hat,” hacking to Fort Bliss.
It’s not the dark art of illegal hacking, or “black hat,” but the variety of hacking used to help governments and companies find security breaches before the organizations get hacked.
A “computer learning center,” New Horizons is different from, say, Western Technical College or El Paso Community College. It doesn’t offer degrees and doesn’t operate on a semester basis.
Instead, it offers certifications to those who need very specific training that can be applied to a job fast.
Walker with Cisco says that type of education is playing a greater role, especially now with so many jobless.
“Part of that is they have the wrong skills. The needs have changed by the time they graduate college, especially if technology is in the mix,” she says.
She adds, “Imagine the challenge that education has. By the time they roll out the program to teach a programming language, the need is gone.”
Dot-com boom
Kennedy, who grew up in Irvine, Calif., says she began selling computers as a youngster, and New Horizons was one of her clients.
Selling computers transformed into a business, Centric Resources, and soon she was selling to Fortune 500 clients in Silicon Valley.
Kennedy rode the dot-com boom to its crest and, with uncanny timing, sold the company’s $40 million portfolio to MicroAge before the bust in 2000. She says she had a desire to share the things she had learned in the tech industry and saw New Horizons as a way to do that.
As Kennedy’s business grew, so did New Horizons. Founded in 1982, New Horizons now has more than 300 centers around the world and is operated as a franchise. Kennedy says she became the owner of the Southwest region in 2006.
But given the most recent recession, Kennedy says, they have moved cautiously, offering classes in El Paso on a case-by-case basis and with no permanent location.
Earlier this month, she says, New Horizons officially expanded into El Paso with the opening of the permanent location at Region 19. A grand opening celebration will be held next month.
Kennedy has built a public-private partnership with Region 19. The school is providing training to Region 19 staff in trade for support from Region 19’s information technology staff.
“When we go live and teach a class, it is like a Broadway play. Computers have to be networked to data, and that takes processing power. The IT group helps with that,” Kennedy says.
Her company, Rare Technologies, is based in Albuquerque, N.M., but Kennedy says she is considering moving the New Horizon’s Southwestern region headquarters to El Paso.
She says she’s found El Paso to be exceptionally business friendly.
E-mail El Paso Inc. reporter Robert Gray at rsgray@elpasoinc.com or call (915) 534-4422 ext. 105.
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