Developing the Successful IT Consultant of the Future

The Academy concept enables GlassHouse to create a release valve in an increasingly pressurized IT infrastructure labor market by developing talent that does not currently exist in the marketplace.  GlassHouse recognizes that there is a gap in skills and resources to effectively manage a complex, heterogeneous IT environment, thus leading to the need to cultivate a broader pool of smart, experienced resources who are able to manage ongoing, explosive data growth as well as new initiatives such as server or desktop virtualization, data center migrations, and deduplication.

The GlassHouse Academy provides a combination of practical training, formal mentoring and coaching and practical work experience to enable trainee consultants to perform at a level that their current environment does not enable.  Our mission is to identify untapped talent who will become the successful consultants of the future.

What is the Academy?

The GlassHouse UK Academy is not a Graduate Training program nor does it merely represent a skills augmentation or transition for our trainees. Rather, it is an intensive program designed to “fast track” the transformation of intelligent, consultative and skilled junior technologists into consultants in the speciality areas of:

• Design and Integration (D&I)
• Strategy
• Project Management Services
• Data Centers
• Managed Services

An example profile of a D&I Academy trainee would be an expert technician who may have reached a career ceiling for any number of possible reasons. The Academy transformation opportunity offers unlimited career potential to this type of professional who is ready to take a step out from under their current ceiling onto a long career ladder with GlassHouse.

Learning and Transformation

Academy learning and transformational events include:

• GlassHouse and Academy-specific induction
• Basic sales and consulting skills training
• Personal and professional development supported by mentors and the Academy Manager
• A three tiered program covering core, intermediate and advanced subjects within the trainee consultant’s speciality area
• Business scenarios and simulations

How Does a Successful Consultant of the Future Help Our Customers?

Academy trainee consultants are fully equipped to deliver the complex solutions required to deliver maximum benefit and return on investment to our customers.

Specifically, our Academy trainees are trained in:

• The most recent, cutting edge technologies
• Robust analytical and problem solving methods
• Consultancy skills – the softer skills of negotiation and selling as well as the more tangible techniques around process and methodology
• Industry best practices

The combination of training in these areas reinforces our robust and cost effective delivery in support of our established and recently announced service offerings.

Customers working with our Academy trainees benefit from:

• The injection of new ideas on their business and technical issues
• The infectious enthusiasm and a fresh perspective that Academy trainees bring to the client site

Recent Academy trainees have demonstrated their ability to fulfil fully fledged consultancy roles at client sites after just a few weeks of Academy training.  Our Academy trainee consultants’ experience with our customers to date has been overwhelmingly positive. Because of their previous relevant experience, the trainees are able to contribute much earlier during their traineeship to project meetings as well as to the creation of customer solutions and the production of final deliverables.