Out of date material and poor training portals is a definite no no
Guy Hocking
Role: Group managing director, Utilize
Which vendors are you focusing your technical and sales staff accreditation efforts on in 2022, and why?
Microsoft and Sophos.
What are your ambitions for the partnerships?
Microsoft: Evolving the breadth and depth of our Microsoft skills pool is a full-time job. Our training and development co-ordinators regularly update the training plans for our teams. This year we are ramping up our skills in the Power Platform and have clear targets around this.
Sophos: Retaining our Platinum partnership is something we have successfully achieved each year. This year is about building on that skillset and exploring our wider security portfolio.
Are there any new/emerging vendors where you are ramping up accreditation efforts? If so, why?
Security is ever evolving. So much so we have a dedicated team researching new services that can help protect our clients. We are looking at managed 24/7 alerting, managed intruder detection and a whole range of complementary services. Dedicated Darkweb scanning is the latest managed service we have developed, ID Agent from Kaseya being our vendor of choice and a focus of our skills accreditation.
What's your biggest bugbear when it comes to vendor accreditation and training?
Out of date material and poor training portals is a definite no no in this ever-changing industry.
If you could give your vendors one piece of advice on how to improve their accreditation/training process, what would it be?
We have just embarked on an apprenticeship programme that see's us commit to a cohort of 10 apprentices per year. Having spoken with local college leaders, I believe more vendor engagement with these programmes at this level (going into colleges and helping run an up-to-date curriculum) would be hugely advantageous to students and the wider industry.
See next page to find out CAE Technology CEO Justin Harling's vendor priorities and accreditation bugbears…
