BankBoston Corp. has completed the training of 40 of its technical employees in Internet-related technologies in 11 weeks.
It hired Technology Resource Group Inc., a training company that was acquired last week by BEA Systems Inc., to coach the 40 in object technology, distributed components, and the C++ and Java programming languages.
"Our philosophy is just-in-time training," said Beth Hassinger, senior manager in BankBoston's technology and operations education department.
The schooling included work on such new programming technologies as Sun Microsystems' Java, which can operate on any type of computing platform.
"Java is absolutely an important technology," Ms. Hassinger said. "In some cases, C++ is the programming language of choice. The benefits of the technology have to do with the ability to change quickly as business needs change."
Maynard, Mass.-based Technology Resource Group customized curriculums for three BankBoston development teams. Fifteen bank employees were trained on HomeLink, a home banking application for customers who want to check their balances and transfer funds.
Another 15 working on the BankBoston.com Web site were trained in applications that would support the end-user interface, and 10 people from BankBoston's architecture team were trained on middleware that lets Web- based applications connect with mainframe software and data bases. The bank plans to train an additional 10 people in Internet support soon.
Most of the 1,200 information technology employees at the $77.6 billion- asset banking company work on traditional mainframe and client/server applications.
Martin Schedlbauer, former chief executive officer and chief technology officer at Technology Resource Group, is now senior director of education product development at San Jose, Calif.-based BEA Systems.
"We have very senior technologists who live and breathe" new developments like Java and extensible markup language, or XML, he said.
Mr. Schedlbauer said banks face two major challenges as technology evolves: re-engineering their systems and retraining personnel so that they can migrate to electronic commerce technology.
Technology Resource Group's full-time staff of 15 strengthens BEA in the practices, tools, and languages of electronic commerce.
"Now we're a stronger organization relative to providing support on business-critical application development," said Tom Morton, senior director of worldwide educational services at BEA.
Technology Resource Group is being integrated into BEA Worldwide Services, which accounted for more than a third of BEA's $289 million of revenue last year.
BEA's customers include State Street Corp., Merrill Lynch & Co., Chase Manhattan Corp., Wells Fargo & Co., Lloyds TSB, Barclays International, Bank of Montreal, and Societe General.
