The Municipal Information Systems Association of California’s (MISAC) Education Committee continues to expand its impressive professional development offering. MISAC’s wide range of courses and workshops benefits both Information Technology/Systems employees and managers alike. And, by partnering with proven instructors and trainers, MISAC can offer high-quality, high-demand training at a fraction of normal costs.

Recently, MISAC ran a virtual online course for the brand-new 6.0 version of VMware vSphere™. Within only a couple of weeks, all 20 virtual seats available in the online class had been filled. City employees, county employees, and professionals from special districts attended the class.

Led by VMware expert Larry Karnis, students were given an intensive introduction to virtualization using VMware’s vSphere™ 6.0. Larry is a well-known expert on VMware and has decades of experience in this kind of training. “It’s important to find someone who is knowledgeable, good with students, and knows how to properly pace this type of instruction. Larry Karnis has all of these attributes and that’s what makes courses like this so valuable to our students,” said Ken Philips, chair of the 2015 MISAC Education Committee.

Karnis even kept the virtual lab open for the entire week after the course was done, giving students additional opportunity to solidify the lessons they had learned. Out of the class participants surveyed, 100% said they would attend additional courses delivered by this instructor and they would recommend this course to another member of their organization/network.

Many of these types of courses are only offered in physical locations and require air travel in order to attend. By taking classes online, employees and employers are able to cut costs and logistics tied to travel. The partnership between MISAC and Proven Impact Learning also provided a cost savings of 40-50% off the usual price for this VMware class. This type of training normally costs $3,800 or more; MISAC members were able to take this course for only $1,895 and non-members were able to take it for $2,195.

Due to popular demand, MISAC and Proven Impact Learning are hosting a repeat of this same online VMware 6.0 class from June 29 to July 3. I Larry Karnis will lead the instruction again, though this next class will have a smaller class size of approximately 15 seats available. Since these seats fill up quickly, we suggest staying up to date on future training announcements by visiting MISAC.org.