KnowledgeTek offers hands-on engineer training; doubles size of its faculty

BROOMFIELD — Fifteen-year-old KnowledgeTek has experienced its most significant growth spurt during the past two years, according to partner Don Walford.

The company trains engineers in computer interfaces, data storage, and server and network environments. Demand for its high-level, hands-on engineer training drove KnowledgeTek to double its faculty.

“We get excellent feedback from our engineers,´ said Learning Services Coordinator Kathryn Eason of Maxtor, a Longmont-based hard disk drive manufacturer that employs KnowledgeTek.

Walford said KnowedgeTek prides itself in not only having qualified instructors on staff, but instructors who use a logical teaching approach.

Founder Mike Machado, one of the firm’s 23 instructors, is a working illustration of Walford’s point. “We just bought a new phone system,” Walford said. “My instinct was to plug it in and figure out the two functions I need to know — call waiting and messages.”

But not Machado. “Mike took a phone and the ( instruction) book home,” Walford said. “He took it apart and after two days, he gave a Power Point presentation on it. Now I use 20 functions on the phone, and I understand 40. Mike can (teach like that about) tape drives and disk drives.”

The demand for skilled engineers stems from demand for more data storage, Walford said. “The market for storage is supposed to expand tenfold in the next five years,” he said.

Walford said that about half of the company’s client list schedules on-site training tailored to their specific company. “We will go in and help train their own people about their own equipment,” he said. “It works well for engineers moving between a department, or moving up in a department.”

The average cost is $400 per day. A much more hands-on lab course can go as high as $700. Companies that request on-site training receive discounted rates. KnowledgeTek training is worth the money, according to Andrew Amalfitano, a consulting engineering manager at Storage Technology Corp. in Louisville.

“StorageTek focuses on their customers,” Amalfitano said. “Technical training is one of the key benefits we provide for our customers. KnowledgeTek adds value to StorageTek by helping us meet that need.”

StorageTek develops and manufactures hardware and software for the computer storage industry and has contracted with KnowledgeTek for the past 12 months, Amalfitano said.

Walford said that KnowledgeTek training levels set it apart from technical college courses. “(The KnowledgeTek training) is designed for advanced engineers. (College courses) teach you how to operate and build, but a lot of our courses are for people who have to move things out of a warehouse and into user’s hands and have it work now, for real.”

Engineers with KnowledgeTek training are able to move up in their professions because “our people provide solutions,” Walford said. “We know what’s going on out there, and we’re able to provide solutions. A disk engineer or tape engineer who wants to move into storage can really advance his career.”

He ascribes the reason for students’ success to “our coursework. There’s so much research that goes into our coursework,” he said.

“(KnowledgeTek) brings us very fresh technical training because they update regularly,” Eason said. “Technology changes daily, and they need to keep it updated, and it is.”

Walford said faculty members aren’t theorists. “They’ve had the problems before, fixed them and are creative,” he said.

Walford believes that KnowledgeTek will grow more during the next year or two, but is wary of growing too fast. “We want to keep the quality high,” he said. “We only do one thing. We research and build the content of the seminars and deliver them for a fee. It’s in contrast to the way it’s done at a lot of places.”

Boulder-based Executrain, for example, provides both technical and end-user training for programs such as Power Point, Access and Outlook, according to Tom McCoumb, registration and test administrator for the company.

Walford views KnowledgeTek’s narrow niche as an advantage. “It keeps us focused,” he said. “We want to improve these people who hire us. There’s nothing else to it. We’re not looking to be big or go public.”

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