ICP is one of the world's largest providers of credit. For more than 1 million businesses, large and small, ICP provides financing to purchase, lease and distribute equipment, as well as capital for real estate and corporate acquisitions, refinancing and restructuring. For its more than 100 million individual clients, ICP offers credit cards, sales finance programs, home, car and personal loans and credit insurance.

ICP was adopting IBM WebSphere software, particularly IBM PureApplication Service, as part of their larger cloud strategy. They tested the platform for a year for non-critical functions. Based on the success of the test, ICP was looking to operationalize the platform company-wide by migrating the remaining functions and operations. ICP engaged IBM to assist with developing and documenting standard operating procedures. They also identified a need to build foundational knowledge with its application run and technical operations teams since this platform would affect a number of cross-functional teams and departments.

ICP needed a flexible training solution that could support students in both the U.S and India as they learned new PureApp skills and pursued certifications for a number of WebSphere applications. The technologies involved included IBM Cloud Solutions, primarily PureApplication Service, WebSphere Application Server, WebSphere MQ, Cast Iron and DataPower SOA Appliances.

Ultimately, ICP chose Global Knowledge because of our existing relationship, history of high-quality delivery, worldwide capabilities and status as an IBM training partner. The learning solution began with on-demand technical overviews that helped to develop core competencies and terminology and then progressed into two instructor-led sessions. The sessions were delivered on-site and virtually to accommodate geographically dispersed students in Chicago, IL, Danbury, CT, and India.

Twenty-nine students were trained within three months, and with their new skills, ICP was able to increase operational rigor and minimize the risk of costly incidents and outages. Training across two additional departments enabled ICP to move the operational support functions from the enterprise architecture team, spreading the workload and providing efficiencies.

Global Knowledge also provided training plans for ICP team members pursuing certifications in the next year to support WebSphere as the backbone of their cloud transition. With the foundational knowledge in place, ICP will benefit from PureApp's full range of functions, including identifying patterns across its operations, automating tasks, adjusting to changes in real time and expanding its data storage capacity.