"EAP is aimed at bridging the gap between skilled professionals and the industry"

Information storage and management is the fastest

growing segment within IT, growing at 17 per cent. A huge gap exists between the

skilled professional and the need of the storage and information management

industry.






To build a pool of skilled information management and storage professionals,
Information management and storage company EMC has launched the EMC Academy

Program (EAP). In an interview, EMC India president Manoj Chugh discusses with

Pragati Simlote of CyberMedia News the details of EAP and the rationale behind

launching this program.

 Excerpts:






Could you elaborate on the EMC Academy Program (EAP)?







EAP presents a new opportunity for students in storage, which is one of the
fastest growing segments in the IT industry. Increasingly, Indian organizations

want to build an intelligent information infrastructure. They need access to a

large pool of skilled information management and storage professionals and the

EAP is targeted at bridging that divide.






What is the rationale behind launching EAP?







Information storage and management is the fastest growing segment within IT,
growing at 17 per cent. Therefore, there is greater need to create an

intelligent information infrastructure, which is independent of a company's

compute and network infrastructure.






To do this, we need to have professional who have the skill-sets, know how to
design such architectures, deploy them and support and sustain them. When we

look at academia, no one offers courses on storage.






NASSCOM has predicted shortage of 10 million IT professionals in India by 2010
and it is our estimate that at least 20 per cent of them are people who need to

understand storage technology and information management. EAP is geared towards

building this pool of skilled information management and storage professionals.






What is EMC's role in this program?







We are giving end-to-end support to institutions who choose to offer this course
as part of their program. We will provide the curriculum, course content,

learning material, faculty training and software simulators for the program. The

simulators run standard Windows PC and students can simulate various storage

technologies on this. We would also provide program support in terms of

examination papers, and sample assignments.






We are targeting colleges, which fulfill certain prerequisites. This includes
courses on operating systems like UNIX, database and networking technology. So

the students must know an OS, a database and networking before joining the EAP

program.






Overall, the course has multiple flavors. But right now we are introducing one
flavor of the course at the bachelor level and would continue to add more

advanced courses.






What route is EMC taking to impart these programs?







We are not setting up our own academies but will sign up with Universities and
colleges to deliver this course. Right now we have tied up with 15 institutions

and plan to sign up around 50 institutions in this program by the end of 2006.






Recently, we signed up with Delhi College of Engineering (DCE) where DCE will
offer information storage and management courses as part of its curriculum from

July 2006. As an EMC Nodal Academy, DCE will also act as the regional hub for

the EAP in North India and will support EMC in identifying and appointing other

educational institutions and training the faculty of the other institutes in the

region.






How would the students benefit from this course?







There are two ways in which students are going to benefit. As this course is
part of their normal college curriculum, they get their normal degrees.

Secondly, the content that we have packaged in this program also allows students

to take international examinations and certifications in storage technology and

information management. They can take this through Prometric. So at the time of

graduation, students would have a normal degree as well as a certification,

which is optional.






Is EMC looking at any revenue stream from this?







For EMC, we are not looking at this as a revenue stream. We see a huge gap in
terms of skills in the area of storage technology and storage management and

being a market leader we have some responsibility. We will train the trainers

and will not charge anything from the institutions - no royalty, no training

fees and no fee for the simulator. We will come out with content relevant to the

industry and academia and what the institutions do and how they go and market

this program depends on the policies of individual institutions.