by Pete Hnath (Red Hat)

Innovate or die. It's the essence of what successful companies do, especially in the tech space. At Red Hat, there is ongoing innovation in every dimension of the business, with new products like CloudForms, new infrastructure like the Customer Portal and new metrics like Net Promoter.

The Curriculum team is similarly pushing to innovate with our course offerings and course delivery. In the last year we've completely changed the way Red Hat courses are taught to ensure the most hands-on experience possible. Gone are hour long, death-by-slide lectures. Students are actively engaged through multiple teaching approaches and near-continuous labs focused on solving problems rather than tools and technologies. Instructors are now armed with comprehensive guides with best practices on how to teach topics, resulting in across-the-board consistency and a more optimal student learning environment.

The coming year promises even more exciting innovations. We are actively working to move our virtual training (VT) business to the cloud to expand and ensure global accessibility. To my knowledge, Red Hat will be among the first training businesses delivering production VT classes globally via the cloud, proof that you can run commercial, mission-critical apps on a public cloud. And yes, the architecture will be powered by the full portfolio of Red Hat products.

We also expect to introduce new offerings for self-paced training that will replace our traditional eLearning courses. These will be delivered to better mesh with the learning styles of IT professionals for a more authentic, convenient and portable experience. With an improved offering that combines eBooks, recorded webinars and online labs delivered by Red Hat's VT platform, students will soon be able to globally access and consume Red Hat training on mobile devices, such as tablets and smart phones.

What's more, we've already delivered new courses on RHEV 3, JBoss Portal, JON, BRMS and ESB, and we plan to deliver new courses on MRG-Messaging, Red Hat Storage (Gluster) and CloudForms. Lots going on! Stay tuned... - Pete