EMC to help teach storage skills

By Don Sambandaraksa, Bangkok Post
Thursday, January 03, 2008 12:30 PM

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.


WORTHWHILE?

0

0 votes
Blog

Talkback 0 comments

There are currently no comments for this post.

Guest user

Guest user

Level: 
Joined: —
Already a member? Log in »



 

Loading...

Tech Jobs Now!

Mainsoft: Opening options for Java, .NET developers

Java

Mainsoft provides tools for running .NET code on the Java platform.


Read more »


Tags

  1. asian
  2. bid
  3. by
  4. china
  5. companies
  6. data
  7. eds
  8. gartner
  9. global
  10. green
  11. hp
  12. ibm
  13. ict
  14. india
  15. indian
  16. investors
  17. key
  18. market
  19. microsoft
  20. outsourcing
  21. report
  22. sets
  23. soe
  24. spend
  25. spore
  26. tech
  27. uk
  28. us
  29. workers
  30. yahoo
 
Increase performance with eco-technology innovations
Simplify your infrastructure and unify management, while lowering power and cooling costs of your datacenter.
» Maximum flexibility with powerful blade technolgy
» Bring new services and applications online faster
» Lower energy use and cost
Oracle SOA Business Software Centre
Many companies are recognizing the need to adopt standards in their efforts to build service-oriented applications.
Secure the "Next-Gen SOA Infrastructure" & "Bringing SOA Value Patterns to Life" whitepapers here

» Visit the Power Center

Up close and personal with a merger

Blog thumbnail

What can you get for 13.9 billion buckaroos? For Hewlett-Packard, US$13.9 billion would allow you to buy your way into becoming the second biggest IT services company in the industry...... by Eileen Yu

Read more »