By the year 2012, one in five IT staff will be primarily involved in information storage and management, with market demand for an estimated 288,000 people. The growth is highest in Asia and data storage specialist EMC is launching its EMC Academic Alliance to help local universities meet this demand.
Speaking to a group of journalists, EMC country manager Thada Savetsila explained that while worldwide growth in demand for storage skills is between 6 to 8 percent, in Asia it is 12 to 14 percent. More and more companies are relocating their primary data centers here in Asia which is perceived as the engine of growth for the global economy.
"The danger is that Thailand is not ready for this. We have around 40,000 IT certified engineers according to the Software Industry Promotion Agency, yet we need many more architects... I cannot even find the number of certified storage professionals out of that 40,000," he said.
Thada said that Thailand would soon have to modernize its systems in order to keep up with competition. For instance, today it takes the government four to five months to come up with immigration numbers, figures which should be made available in real-time.
But once the public administration is modernized, this will create a huge demand on data storage and for compliance with various data retention and privacy directives. Without local expertise, Thailand will have to import the knowledge in the form of foreign experts and system integrators.
The EMC Academic Alliance is a program started in June 2006 which provides free courseware and 60 hours of training for two professors in a partner university, so that they can provide a vendor-neutral course for data storage professionals both for IT graduates and those doing non-computing courses.
Said Thada: "[The trainee] does not have to be [from] EMC. He can be from Hitachi or IBM. The idea is so that graduates can know the basics of technology in a data center, compliance issues and ILM (Information Lifecycle Management)," he quickly added.
So far, 21 universities from the United States have joined the program, 21 in China and 101 in India, with over 4,000 students taking the course.
The program will be formally launched in conjunction with Software Park Thailand in January 2008. Thada said he is aiming for the technical colleges such as the King Mongkut's Institute of Technology, Mahidol University and Chulalongkorn University for the initial launch. "For the first year I would be delighted if I can sign up five universities," Thada said.
However, while the course is free, formal certification will cost US$200 through a network of evaluation partners. EMC will offer further professional training courses for between 21,000 to 38,000 baht (US$621 to US$1,123).
In the meantime, EMC is preparing to offer "resident professional services"--essentially providing an expert who works at a client's data center to help implement projects and train staff.
Another offering is to lease storage equipment tied in with a service level agreement.
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