As featured in the Democrat and Chronicle:
Depending on how you count, Logical Operations is a 2-year-old start-up firm or one of the oldest information technology training firms in the Rochester region.
The first incarnation of Logical Operations came when it was founded in 1982 by two Rochester Institute of Technology professors. And it’s gone through numerous hands and incarnations since then — being bought in 1991 by Ziff-Davis Inc., and again in 1999 by a private investment firm that changed its name to Element K.
The Henrietta firm got its second lease on life when former President Bill Rosenthal — who left months before the 1999 purchase — bought back part of Element K’s operations when that company was sold in 2011 to SkillsSoft Corp.
And since that convoluted 2012 rebirth, Logical Operations has been on a buying spree. In November 2013, it bought the Rochester franchise of IT training company New Horizons. Earlier this year, it purchased textbook and study guide printer AXZO Press. And in October it announced its acquisition of Rochester IT training firm Accent Training.
“Bigger is better,” Rosenthal said.
Logical Operations started with floppy discs tucked inside of three-ring binders — the materials needed to teach such software as DOS and Lotus 123. Today the backbone of Logical Operations is 4,600 in-house training products, from software packages to printed course material to classes taught online, virtually or in person in the training center at its Winton Place offices. The training covers everything from web design and IT security to Quark, CRM, OS administration and various business skills. It also is a reseller of training put together by other firms ranging from Cisco and IBM to the National Institute for Social Media.
“I was always very much enamored with the live training business,” said Rosenthal. “I fundamentally believe 90 percent of the people 90 percent of the time are going to choose people” instead of online e-learning.
Logical Operations’ customer base includes area companies getting training for workers, and a variety of outside-the-area firms that specialize in training provision, such as New Horizons or Global Knowledge.
Rosenthal said he restarted Logical Operations with the idea of opening a training center. And while Element K would build its own coursework, it did not use it in training
“It was always one of the things that made our business unique,” he said. “You write it. You teach it. And it makes a better product.”
The Winton Place facility, which Logical Operations moved to in 2013, “is our living laboratory,” Rosenthal said.
Revenues are up 20 percent this year, pushed in part by acquisitions. Rosenthal said he hoped to see at least 15 percent revenue growth in 2015 through organic growth and more acquisitions. The company employs 80 in Rochester in sales, customer service, technical support, and curriculum development, as well as in its own internal print shop for turning out books and manuals. That number is up 12 since the start of the year. Rosenthal said that for 2015, the company is expecting similar headcount growth.
Meanwhile, the training and online learning universe is changing rapidly. Two years ago, 95 percent of Logical Operations curriculum was printed, from the company’s set of Kodak-made digital printing presses. Today, the material increasingly is gravitating online or onto computer tablets preloaded with curriculum, Rosenthal said. And starting next year, Logical Operations plans on shipping whole classrooms worth of tablets instead of books.
At the same time, online options for training and e-learning are expanding rapidly — particularly free ones such as Khan Academy
However, Rosenthal said, “A Khan Academy is a place to learn, but probably not the place for high stakes (such as instruction required for certifications).
Added Nancy Curtis, Logical Operations vice president of content, “You can’t ask a question of e-learning. You don’t have that interaction.”
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MDANEMAN@DemocratandChronicle.com
