The Cloud Platform competency is designed for partners to capitalize on the growing demand for infrastructure and software as a service (SaaS) solutions built on Microsoft Azure.
To earn a Microsoft gold competency, partners must successfully complete exams (resulting in Microsoft Certified Professionals) to prove their level of technology expertise. Then, partners must designate those certified professionals uniquely to one Microsoft competency, ensuring a certain level of staffing capacity.
Customer references must also be submitted that demonstrate successful projects, meet a performance (revenue and/or consumption/usage) commitment (for most gold competencies), and pass technology and/or sales assessments.
“By achieving a gold competency, partners have demonstrated the highest, most consistent capability and commitment to the latest Microsoft technology,” said Gavriella Schuster, corporate vice president, Worldwide Partner Group at Microsoft Corp. “These partners have a deep expertise that puts them in the top of our partner ecosystem, and their proficiency will help customers drive innovative solutions.”
FNTS successfully demonstrated a “best-in-class” ability and commitment to meet Microsoft Corp. customers’ evolving needs in today’s mobile-first, cloud-first world and distinguishing itself within Microsoft’s partner ecosystem.
As technology rapidly changes, businesses seek out competitive advantages. One of those advantages comes from utilizing technology partners like FNTS to stay current on advances in cloud, software and data center offerings.
“Companies are becoming more reliant on cloud services, including Microsoft Azure and Microsoft Office 365 to differentiate their businesses and connect with new customers,” said FNTS President, Kim Whittaker. “This Microsoft gold competency showcases our expertise in and commitment to today’s technology market and demonstrates our deep knowledge of Microsoft’s products and services. We plan to accelerate our customers’ success by serving as technology advisors for their business demands.”
The Nebraska Department of Education has approved Interface: The Web School courses to be eligible for GI Bill benefits, which provide education reimbursement and other benefits to service members following their service to the military.
Interface is one of just two code schools between Denver and Chicago to offer classes in web technologies that are eligible for GI Bill benefits.
“Meeting the growing demands for tech talent on the Silicon Prairie requires expanding access to education and career development training,” said AIM Institute President and CEO Kandace Miller. “AIM Institute is proud to work with the VA to help increase veterans’ access to life-changing training and education.”
As part of the non-profit AIM Institute, Interface School develops tech talent through hands-on educational programming and professional development training in the latest web technologies.
Veterans are now eligible to receive GI benefits to learn high-demand skills in web development, data science and computer languages in an accelerated format.
“Interface School is honored to serve veterans by providing technology training that can help them gain an edge in today’s rapidly changing job market by helping them learn and refine in-demand skills,” said LaShonna Dorsey, AIM Vice President of Business Development and Tech Talent, and Interface co-founder. “We’re excited to work with the VA to open doors that will help veterans pursue new opportunities in their lives through our courses.”
Interface: The Web School and Contemporary Analysis (CAN), a company specializing in predictive analytics, formed a teaching partnership called the Omaha Data Science Academy.
The 24-week certificate is now eligible for GI benefits. It is designed to build on existing data science knowledge, and leverage it for a competitive edge in the workforce.
“The skill sets of data scientists are one of the most highly paid skill sets in tech. Military veterans are a special type of person, trained to have high tenacity and discipline to find solutions when not readily apparent. The two together make something special,” said Nate Watson, president of Contemporary Analysis. “Now, vets can use their GI Bill to learn data science skills taught by the real-world data scientists of the Omaha Data Science Academy. This gives them a leg up on their competition for jobs both here and around the country. Not only do Omaha and Lincoln companies win by having world-class talent to recruit from, but vets win by getting relevant, real-world training. Win/win!”
Kent Smotherman, AIM Director of Adult Tech Education, is looking forward to working with more veterans, and helping them enter the tech talent pipeline. It’s an important aspect of TechHire, a national initiative expanding learning opportunities, transforming hiring practices and building inclusive tech communities, which Omaha is a part of.
“It’s exciting to be able to offer veterans the opportunity to learn skills that will not only help them develop professionally, but also help our community advance as a tech community through their contributions,” said Smotherman, who has more than 34 years of development experience.
The GI Bill provides education benefits for service members who have served on active duty for 90 or more days.
In addition to providing benefits for traditional college degrees, it also offers options to veterans for accelerated non-college training programs such as Interface School.
Veterans applying to Interface Web School will need to complete VA Form 22-1999 as part of the enrollment process. The VA facility code for Interface is 3-5-0008-27. Anyone with questions can contact us here.
For more information on VA Education Benefits, click here.
(Infotec 2017.)
This year’s conference features several cutting-edge educational and training opportunities.
Security will be a big focus of the conference. The keynote speaker is retired Maj. Gen. Brett Williams, former Director of Operations at U.S. Cyber Command, and founder of IronNet CyberSecurity.
“A number of sessions are focused on security-related issues, from our opening keynote, to other breakout sessions around application development security, and other aspects of security that participants can get expert advice in trends and data,” said AIM events director Dave Vankat, one of the conference organizers.
For participants looking to solidify their project management credentials, this year’s conference offers two courses: Certified ScrumMaster Training and Certified Agile Leader training.
In the Certified Agile Leader training, participants will develop awareness of Agile leadership thinking, focus, and behaviors.
The Certified ScrumMaster training offers the opportunity to master the Scrum framework and the underlying Agile principles, practices, techniques.
The Drag and Drop Machine learning workshop offers the chance to see a new, user-interface oriented approach to machine learning.
“Drag and drop machine learning is very new and upcoming technology that people can get their feet wet for what is machine learning, and how can it be used relative to large data sets and understand that technology that’s now available,” said Vankat. “It used to be more programming oriented, but is now having some more user interface available, and users don’t have to have the same level of programming knowledge to manipulate the data.”
Infotec 2018 is also offering a day-long workshop on Tableau, the widely-used data organization and visualization software. The workshop will be led by Tablea zen-master Ryan Sleeper, author of the Tableau Public Visualization of the Year (2015), and author of Practical Tableau.
Blockchain, cryptocurrency, marketing and more
Conference goers can also attend sessions offering guidance in the cyber frontiers of blockchain and cryptoeconomics.
“If you’re not familiar with some of those things, it’s a great way to get familiar with some of those kinds of technologies that are still really just on the bleeding edge of where they are going to go,” said Vankat.
The heart of Infotec is the intersection of business and technology, and Vankat says there are multiple workshops covering that convergence.
“We have a number of things around the convergence of marketing and technology. There’s a lot of overlap on how those two disciplines are converging together, things like search engine optimization, and some of the other data analytics kinds of tools that are out there,” said Vankat.
“There’s a lot of great training at Infotec that people can benefit from,” he added.
Anyone interested in attending the conference is encouraged to register as soon as possible on the Infotec website. Funding may be available to cover conference costs for CONNECT Grant recipients. For more information, contact Heartland Workforce Solutions here, or by calling 402-444-4700.
For more information on sessions and speakers, visit the Infotec website.
TEAM recently launched a new Volunteer Time Off (VTO) program to encourage its employee owners to give back to the community.
The employee-owned technology company developed the VTO program to provide community engagement opportunities for its employees that are meaningful and make an impact in the community in which they live and work.
“TEAM strives to make a difference in the lives of our employee-owners, and we’re taking this a step further with the Volunteer Time Off program,” said Judi Szatko, TEAM’s Vice President of Human Resources. “This avenue will help encourage pride and embed a strong community mindset within our culture and company.”
TEAM believes these types of activities also enrich and inspire the lives of employee-owners. Amanda Sullivan, TEAM’s Director of Marketing & Communications, said the company’s employee-owners are excited to contribute their hours to something that fits their talents.
“There’s been a lot of buzz around it,” said Sullivan. “It gives employee owners an opportunity to do something that is meaningful to them and give back.”
The program expands on TEAM’s already successful partnership with TeamMates, a youth mentoring organization that TEAM has supported since 2013.
All employee-owners can receive up to four days of VTO per year specifically to volunteer on behalf of the company. For a company that employs 124 people, giving them each 32 hours per year to volunteer is a large investment.
“We know it’s an investment and that’s the kind of investment we want to make, not only for our employee-owners and future employee-owners but for improving and contributing to the community,” said Sullivan. “It’s important to us to have a connection here.”
TEAM is a B2B company with approximately 400 customers all over North America. Their customer base is largely from outside the Omaha area, so reinforcing the company’s connection to the local community where employee-owners work and live is important.
Recommended volunteer activities support civic-minded and 501(c)(3) nonprofit community improvement organizations such as Youth Emergency Services, YMCA or TeamMates. Other activities can include those that address health and research initiatives like fundraiser run/walk events or volunteering at a nursing home, food bank or hospital.
In addition to making changes in the community, the VTO program is reinforcing TEAM’s company culture and increasing the stake each person has in the company.
“It’s about cultivating that culture around employee ownership. We all own the company so we hold each other to pretty high expectations, we’re the shareholders,” said Sullivan. “We think it’s really important to focus on not only what you can get out of it, but what having this kind of culture can enable you to give.”
Sullivan said that the more things like the VTO program that TEAM offers, the more chances they have of displaying their company culture to people who may not know who they are or what they do. That exposure has multiple benefits including attracting new employee-owners.
“As a tech company, we know that we’re competing for highly talented people,” said Sullivan. “You can be a developer everywhere but can you be a developer at a company that’s community-minded?”
Catch up on regional tech news with these recent top stories from Silicon Prairie News:
The Startup Collaborative invited Omaha’s innovators, entrepreneurs and supporters to their first-annual Startup Showcase and Expo at the Omaha Design Center on Thursday. The event was The Startup Collaborative’s new take on a demo day, adding in a startup bullpen, a pop-up stage featuring investors and startup ecosystem funders, and a speakeasy after-party.
The expo and showcase was a “high-energy celebration of growth for the 60 plus startups we continuously work with, and a dive into some of the emerging technologies driving future businesses,” said expo organizers.
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Nelnet announced this week it has completed the acquisition of Madison-based Great Lakes Educational Loan Services, Inc. from Great Lakes Higher Education Corporation.
A press release provided by Nelnet said the company paid $150 million for 100 percent of the stock of Great Lakes, following the satisfaction of all required closing conditions. The acquisition makes Lincoln-based Nelnet the nation’s largest servicer of federal student loans.
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I speak to a lot of student entrepreneurs, and someone always asks some variation of “how did you get/earn/find ________?” No matter what they’re asking about, I usually can distill it down to two main points: 1) Play the Odds. 2) Just Ask.
I know, it sounds super simple. “Duh, Paul. You have to do the work to see the reward.” But I think so many of us forget that it IS simple (I include myself in this pool, 100%.) We want the answer to success to be complicated or plain luck because then we can justify failure upfront and why not “to attempt.” We want the fallback (it’s complicated and expensive), the scapegoat (I just have bad luck) as if there’s some magical recipe for reaching our goals that we don’t know. Maybe that’s a cultural problem or a human brain problem – I’ll leave that part to the experts.
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The return of the tenth annual Big Omaha conference was announced today, but with one major change. This year, the inspirational tech conference will take place in conjunction with the Maha Music Festival.
The Big Omaha conference, now part of the Maha experience, will be held August 16 and 17 with venue details to be announced. Maha will be expanded to two days and will take place on August 17 and 18 in Aksarben Village.
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