ITpreneurs first to offer COBIT® Courses in Japanese

(Tokyo) To address the growing need for COBIT competence and knowledge in the Japanese market, ITpreneurs has been able to sucessfully localize and launch the first ever official ISACA® COBIT Foundation CourseTM and COBIT Awareness Course TM in Japanese. The COBIT Foundation ExamTM in Japanese currently under development has been planned for release in the beginning of December 2006.

The COBIT Awareness Course costs US $199 and is an introduction to the COBIT framework, suitable for service managers and governance executives.

The flagship COBIT Foundation Course in Japanese can be taken either as a self-paced e-learning course or as a blended course combining e-learning with a virtual instructor. The COBIT Foundation self e-learning course is priced at US $699 or US $749 with instructor support.

All courses are based on “learning by doing” principles, by following ITpreneurs’ sophisticated case-study based learning methods which allow the learner to effectively apply the theoretical knowledge in practice.

The launch of COBIT courses in Japanese language reflects the growing need for local language versions, following the rapid adoption of the COBIT framework by a growing number of large Japanese companies. Adoption of the COBIT framework in Japan is driven by new corporate governance and compliance legislation, the so-called J-SOX, Japan’s own version of the Sarbanes-Oxley legislation on corporate governance. It is also a fact that the COBIT framework is increasingly becoming recognized as the de facto IT governance standard, developed and owned by the IT Governance Institute® (ITGI™).

ITpreneurs is already positioned as the market leader in the IT service management domain in Japan, with its innovative e-learning products, such as ITIL Foundation Course, boasting a market share in Japan of 30% in 2005 (Source: itSMF Japan). Over the coming three years, driven by J-SOX compliance and increased awareness for IT governance and compliance issues, ITpreneurs expects COBIT to follow a similar exponential growth path as ITIL did in the last five years. With an expected tenfold increase in the number of COBIT Foundation Exams from 500 in 2006 to 5,000 in 2008, Japan’s training market would be fortified as the third largest market for COBIT after North America and Europe.

ITpreneurs is committed to offer training for the growing Japanese market and is poised to launch a series of localized IT service management and governance courses in the near future.


About ITGI
The IT Governance Institute (www.itgi.org) was established in 1998 to advance international thinking and standards in directing and controlling an enterprise’s information technology. Effective IT governance helps ensure that IT supports business goals, optimizes business investment in IT, and appropriately manages IT-related risks and opportunities. ITGI offers electronic resources, original research and case studies to assist enterprise leaders and boards of directors in their IT governance responsibilities.


About ITpreneurs
ITpreneurs (www.itpreneurs.com) is a global leader in training solutions in the IT management and IT governance best practice domains. It specializes in best practices frameworks, such as COBIT, ITIL/ITSM and ISO/IEC 20000. ITpreneurs channels the collective knowledge into advanced, effective, and innovative learning and knowledge solutions. The breadth of solutions for these IT best practice frameworks helps organizations globally adopt these frameworks and provides them with guidance for implementation.