(1888PressRelease)
February 21, 2008 - Practice Makes Perfect
Practice-IT is a creative start-up technology company delivering live labs for real world hands-on experience. Students can access their labs over the Internet from any location. By using their existing courseware a student can carry out practical tasks within the lab on real equipment anytime during or after their course. As Practice-IT are content independent there are a wide range of lab technologies available such as Microsoft, Solaris, Linux, Cisco and Checkpoint.
The company believes that the lab environments can really address some of the skill shortage problems that exist in the UK at the moment. Ricky Doyle, one of Practice-IT's directors says “There is no substitute for doing something to make you remember it. In my IT career I have always learnt by doing, that is why we developed the product so that others can then benefit from the same ethos without the problems of installing, configuring and licensing to contend with.” Both Mark Jeggo (Practice-IT’s other director) and Ricky come from a very strong technical IT backgrounds, having developed solutions for some big blue chip companies. They came up with the idea after seeing the lack of basic IT skills of new people entering the industry. “We embarked on this journey about 2 years ago and like any great idea we ran our development infrastructure out of my garage.” says Ricky. “Once we knew we had a viable solution, we started to invest in the suitable infrastructure, hardware and software. We also made the decision to give up our jobs as consultants and pursue our dream of running a business and addressing the IT skills problem.” says Mark.
The solution itself has been developed to be as easy to use as possible for the end user; Practice-IT wanted as little user interaction as possible to connect to a Practice-Lab. That is why there is no complicated software to install or any firewall ports to configure in order to access your server. The concept is pretty straight forward; a student accesses the Practice-Labs portal over the internet and then connects to a real live server (not simulation). From there the student is free to make as many changes to the system as he or she would like, this means that they can actually break something which is probably the best way to learn. In that case the user’s environment is reset to where they started from and continue with their work. The skill and confidence that a user gains from using such a platform allows them to transfer that directly into their work place.
Practice-IT is slightly different to their competitors in this space as they don’t offer official course material but do have a lab guide. Their creative expertise helps to develop environments as close to the work place as possible. This enables them to deliver a more real world lab environment that provides a valid alternative to some of the existing providers currently in the industry. The marketing director of one of their clients says “The product has given us a real competitive edge in the industry and a great place for our students to gain the vital practical skills required to do their jobs or ease the user’s transition in to the IT industry.”
Practice-IT is starting to make inroads into the technical IT Training market with their live, hands on, real world lab platform (Practice-Labs). They have already secured reputable, established training companies to include Practice-Labs with all IT courses they sell. The market is starting to see the benefits of giving students a live lab to develop their practical skills without compromising production systems. Ricky says that he would like to see a practical lab become a standard part of IT training for all technologies which will not only enhance the credibility of IT certifications but also arm the students with the skills to hit the ground running.
http://www.practice-it.co.uk
