"Our focus is workplace skills," company CEO Mike Feerick told InformationWeek in a phone interview. Indeed, Alison started with two globally in-demand skills: English and IT literacy, the latter in the form of ABC IT, a 15- to 20-hour training suite that remains the site's most popular course.

Since then, Alison has added other languages, as well as classes on project management, accounting, customer service, human resources, health studies and basic business skills.

The company says it is growing strongly in Asia and sub-Sahara Africa and the Middle East, where access to such basic instruction might be limited or non-existent... read more.