AllBusiness.com teams up with Powered Inc. for free online business courses

Online business resource AllBusiness.com Inc. has entered into an agreement with online education program firm Powered Inc. to create online business education content on the AllBusiness Web site.

The 25 new online classes, available at http://education.allbusiness.com, are designed to give tutorials to professionals on various business topics, including managing e-mail, wireless networks, Excel, PowerPoint presentations and business networking. The goal is to assist business professionals both in building their businesses and helping them to grow.

"So much of our information is presented in terms of article format, but over the last year, we have introduced new forms of delivering online content," said Kathy Yates, CEO of AllBusiness.com. "When these courses are delivered online, it enables people to work at their own pace. It puts the user in the driver's seat."

Over the next few months, San Francisco-based AllBusiness will roll out dozens of additional courses along with new interactive features, including quizzes, user ratings and message boards. The partnership is a revenue share program, and will be promoted on both companies' Web sites.

The alliance with Powered is part of AllBusiness.com's broader strategy to collaborate with other online services and properties to offer a variety of content to business professionals. The company's other content partners include such sites as WashingtonPost.com, CBSNews.com, BusinessWeek Online, Yahoo, SFGate.com and CareerBuilder.

"The idea behind the partnership is to [make] these courses [available] to publishers [that] don't have the need for the whole platform, but that could use the content," said Dave Ellett, CEO of Powered, based in Austin, TX.