Cisco announces 3rd National Skills Competition

MUMBAI, INDIA: Cisco, a provider in networking services, today organized the Third National Cisco Skills Competition in India.

The day-long competition saw participation of 330 students from 110 teams comprising of three students each from 15 Cisco Networking academies across 14 locations namely Amritsar, Bangalore, Bhopal, Bikaner, Changa, Coimbatore, Jaipur, Kollam, New Delhi, Noida, Patiala, Patna, Vellore, and Vishakhapatnam in India, said a press release.

The three winning teams from IGIAT Vishakhapatnam, Amrita School of Engineering, Bangalore and Engineering College Bikaner would represent India at the SAARC Skills Competition scheduled for end September and the winner would represent India at the APAC Skills Competition slated on October 28th 2010.

The competition was conducted virtually using Cisco Webex Technology and Moodle by the Networking Academy Team of Lokesh Mehra, regional manager-corporate responsibility, Cisco South Asia, Jagan Jothivel, area academy manager, Cisco SAARC and Ananth BS, technical manager, SAARC.

The Skills Competition was of 3 rounds comprising of multiple choice networking related questions followed by packet tracer simulation activities and finally troubleshooting.

Lokesh Mehra, regional manager, corporate responsibility, South Asia said, “At Cisco, we continue to support local initiatives aimed at enhancing employability for students in the IT domain. National Skills Competition is one such platform which helps students evaluate their understanding in multiple areas such as troubleshooting, designing and maintaining computer networks.

He further said that they are planning to expand the outreach to include more colleges in an endeavor to take IT and networking education to students across India and provide them yet another avenue for technical and professional excellence.

The Cisco team, besides participating in the National Skills Competition has also conducted retooling and updates for existing academies offerings Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA) and IT Essentials curriculum to students.

Currently, there are over 167 Cisco Academies across 24 states and union territories with 20698 Active Students, more than 24 per cent of which are women students; Across India 61,669 students have successfully graduated in CCNA and over 80,626 active Cisco Certified Professionals exist, added the release.