KOENIG the worlds number 1 in offshore training

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Hello again!

After doing some googling it seems almost impossible to search CCNP or MCITP training without Koenig being at the top of the search list... EVERY TIME! Are they all they claim to be?

At a previous company I worked for one of the Tech's told me about offshore training and made it sound amazing... Amazing being that your relaxing on a beach somewhere reading through course material with a glass of Sangria (or the Indian equivalent) and attending daily classroom sessions. However are these companies teaching you to pass an exam or teaching you what you really need to know?

I mean the price is rather cheap especially for the CCNP route and includes accommodation and meals! I mean who wouldn't train with them, sounds like a steal!?

Their testimonials section rates them highly, but it seems too good to be true... CCNP full training for 2.5 grand? Meh;

Any thoughts? Anyone been there personally? India not my cuppa tea; Dubai looks nice

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The time scales are short so Im guessing you will need to cram like a mo fo, are you really thinking about attending one of these courses?

 

Sure am, if you compare the price difference to a UK provider.

Since I'm ready to sit ICND2 to complete the CCNA in about 6 months or so when I have some experience under my belt in networks I will take on the CCNP, check the price difference below (its shocking! )

Firebrand £5640 - duration 8 days.

Koenig £2550 - duration 16 days.

I mean look at the difference if anything Firebrand look all bootcampy & brain dumpy to get you through the same thing in half the time!

P.S, flights are not included in the India price but i checked earlier on you can get them for around £400 - 500 + a nice Winter Tan!

Someone please tell me the catch

 

I could be wrong here, but wasn't India one of the countries where you had to be a resident in order to sit MS exams there?

I seem to remember it coming up a few years ago, presumably to combat things like this.
Mind you, if that was the case then there would be no point in them continuing to promote their training, so I'm totally confused.

I have spoken to people who have done these courses. They are extremely intense from what I hear, but they do sound like value for money when you add in accomodation and tutors etc.

Of course there is always going to be some doubt about the reality of absorbing everthing you need to pass 4 or 5 MS exams in a week, without any, er, additional assistance. They run their own test centres there, so anything is possible.

If it is all above board then I would say the downside would be that even if I could cram enough to pass the exams in a week, I wouldn't remember a word of it a month later. Stuffing facts into your head so that you can recite them in an exam the next day is all well and good, but without experience and context it's all going to be pretty meaningless in the real world.

If it isn't above board (and I'm not saying it isn't, I'm saying IF) then it actually works out to be very expensive and a long way to go for a couple of braindumps.

So, in summary:

I don't know...

 

I work for an Indian company and the way a lot of them work is very different to us here in the UK.

I would say it's almost guaranteed to be brain dump material, yes you will be in a nice warm climate but I suspect you will be in classes in the day and reading materials all night to really get anything out of it all.

I was tempted to do it myself, but now working with a lot of people from India I don't think it would be very beneficial. We have lots of Engineers at our place, one is even a CCIE Security qualified engineer, but he still seems no where near as good or as proficient as our CCNA and CCNP engineers when it comes to fixing problems on the network etc.

That's my 2 cents worth but I think given the difference in the two cultures the training there will not be as it would be here. The language barrier can also be quite difficult and they tend to speak very very quickly in the Indian culture, about 120 words per minute I think, as opposed to our 80, so you may struggle keeping up with everything.

 

Yeah I suppose bootcamp is never the correct way to do things, however sometimes its better to have someone to ask the question to directly when the penny doesn't drop on a particular area.

Many a time though through my home CCNA study I just use you guys for answers

I think I've come to the conclusion home study is cheaper and If you do have the Cisco kit and do labs it really does stick! Rather than being rushed through material you may need to work on more!

 

All I will say is you get what you pay for and this is especially true where IT Training is concerned.

I went down the route of the Indian Training provider for my MCSE 2003 (many years ago now) and I can tell you that whilst I opted for the longer training (I was scheduled to be in Mumbai for 2 months to do the MCSE and the CCNP) it was not enough time (which is funny considering my goals when I did the 2008 exams).

Part of the problem I experienced in India (not Koenig I should add but one of their competitors who have since gone out of business) was that the attitude and expectations are very different than the UK. As an example the labs that we had were really not what I was expecting equipment wise, computers regularly broke down, were virus infected and slow. The classes were aimed at the local population although there were a steady stream of foreign nationals there as well and because of that the lessons tended to be quite fast.

I also found that because I tended to have a better understanding of the technology I didn't actually have as much tutor time as I wanted (I later changed that when exam results weren't going my way and instead paid extra for the 1-1 tution instead).

I definitely bit off more than I could chew when I took the courses on, I expected that after the two + months that I was there that I would come out of it with my MCSE 2003 with Messaging and Security as well as my CCNP, at week 4 when I was still going through my Microsoft training I knew that there was no way it was going to work for me, especially as I was spending upwards of 5 hours a night going over training material covered during the day (I should add at this point that the books used over there were cheap imitations licensed by the publishers for the Indian continent, paper was very thin and the print quality left a lot to be desired).

I walked away from the experience with my MCSE and Security+, the option of using brain dump material was there but not taken (I failed 70-290 3 times, would have been easier using the dumps but would have cheated myself) and is one of the reasons why I used Firebrand for subsequent training (I was actually talking to The Training Camp (FB predecessor) before going to India), yes it's more expensive to use a UK based training provider but at least you have some come back if something goes wrong (in my case my accommodation was at a local hotel who was fleecing me, only found out this later on when I was asked to pay more money for my bills which I had been told the week before was 10000+ rupee in credit, a week later it was 9000+ in debit, hard to do when the rooms and food were dirt cheap).

I wouldn't go back to India for training, sure I would go for a holiday but never for IT training.

 

I see I see... Maybe I shall just continue self study, thanks for the advice! Cheers Simon