By Gayla Schaefer

As software systems become increasingly complex and corporate purse strings loosen after a difficult few years, many local businesses are starting to seek out additional training for their staff.

The Florida Institute of Technology (FIT) in Melbourne is one local venue that offers basic software classes and can develop specialized professional software education programs.
“We have a contract from the Department of Labor to offer the Microsoft office classes as well as Project and Access,” said Cindy Schmitt, a trainer at FIT. “We are also getting ready to do QuickBooks.”

Several software training sites reported the same increase in requests for money management software training.

“We have had quite a few businesses ask for Intuit QuickBooks financial software (and) that is why we are starting to offer it,” said Donn Miller-Kermani, assistant director of the National Center for Small Business Information at FIT.

Schmitt also noted that FIT can offer specialized training in more complicated programs as requested by companies.

“FIT can teach those and we also offer Lab View and Mat Lab graduate level course that many at the space center use,” Schmitt said.

The Microsoft Office suite is also still a very popular course for those looking for career advancement and those seeking to upgrade employee productivity and proficiency.

“We are increasing course offerings in Microsoft Access and Excel advanced features, as well as Microsoft Project, because of business demand in this area," said Miller-Kermani.

Schmitt reiterated that there is still a big market for training in Excel and Access.
“That is the software we see most businesses looking for,” Schmitt said. “There is so much power to Excel, people can’t really just sit down and teach themselves.”

It is not only employees, however, who are in need of training on new and upgraded software. Managers are also getting refresher courses.

“We offer an Information Management Leadership Program (IMLP) four-week boot camp,” said Suzie DeBusk, president of Dragon Point Inc. in Rockledge.

Dragon Point is a custom software house that develops business solutions and does management consulting for clients, which can include writing software to meet individual business needs.

DeBusk said that the management boot camp program is focused on training program managers as to what they can realistically expect from employees. The program is offered three times per year.

“The devil is in the details,” DeBusk said. “It is easy to say as a manager, ‘Make it do that,’ but we want them to understand how hard ‘that’ can be.”

Lynn Grant, regional director for Barry University in Merritt Island, noted that the school’s division of continuing education has not seen much of an upswing in specialized corporate software training in recent years on the Space Coast.

“(The division) will design programs for companies but we don’t do a lot of that in Brevard currently,” Grant said. “We can develop course programs for a particular company based on their needs, however.”

Many in the software industry are surprised that the general business public have not become more interested in software training in programs known as “open source.”
Open sourcing is a term for software created and provided, code and all, to the public, free of charge, with the understanding that the software code can be used and modified as needed, but not sold or copyrighted.

Julie Deily, who works in the software industry at ENSCO in Melbourne, said that open sourcing, which has been around for decades, is catching on, however.

“A lot of big companies like IBM and Sun open source a lot now,” Deily said. “It is free software that anyone can pick up and use.”

The experts agree that the reason the free technology has not become more prevalent in the mainstream business community is because it has been plagued by the public’s sense that it is too hard to use – or too technical in nature.

Erick Moody, owner of Owl Technology, said the software is getting easier to use, however.
“A lot of times the open source programs are plagued by technical issues but Open Office works perfectly and comes with easy installation,” Moody said. “Open Office is just one example of open sourced software, but it is probably the best example. Another well known one is Linux.”

Owl Technology is a Brevard business that specializes in on-site computer service and repair.
“Often when we sell computers we build for clients we will include Open Office instead of Microsoft Windows, Mozilla Firefox instead of Internet Explorer and Mozilla Thunderbird instead of Outlook, so our customers get some of the best software on the market for free,” Moody said.

Currently, no information was found on courses offered locally to train on open sourced software.

“Open source software has been seen as a counter culture thing,” Moody said. “But it is starting to catch on with mainstream because the (commercial versions) cost a small fortune and are not competitively priced.”