EMC to bridge industry academia gap

Idhries Ahmad/Usha Prasad

BANGALORE: To bridge the huge chasm between the industry requirements and college curriculum, EMC, a storage solutions provider, has tied up with IIIT Bangalore as part of its EMC Academy Program (EAP), which the company says will help produce quality professionals for the burgeoning storage industry.

The programme conducted by EMC in close collaboration with leading institutions across the country aims to develop a resource pool of 10,000 skilled information management and storage professionals in India by 2010.

EMC has already tied up with more than 45 educational institutions across the country including Delhi College of Engineering, BITS Pilani, UPTEC and Manipal and over 1000 students are undertaking the course in information management and storage.

Explaining the need for such a programme, Tom Clancy, Vice President, Global Education Services, EMC Corporation said that the storage industry though one of the five pillars of IT hasn’t got the attention that it calls for in the IT industry.

 “Though other core areas like database administration, networking or security have fond their place in the college curriculum, emphasis on storage is missing and this course run by EMC professionals will seek to provide the necessary knowledge to help students take on the challenges to bridge the gap between the industry requirements and college teaching,” said Tom.

He added that the global storage industry will throw up one million storage related jobs by 2010 and EMC programme is a step to fill the global demand.

“EMC aims to churn out 10,000 storage professionals by 2010 through its EAP,” Tom said, adding that, globally, one million new storage related jobs would be created by 2010.

Tom was speaking on the sidelines of a panel discussion organized by EMC on “The impact of intelligent infrastructure on human resources and the Indian economy,” on Wednesday.   The seminar was also addressed by Prof S Sadagopan, Director, IITB and D Chandershekhar Dr S Chandrashekar, Director IT, Fore School of Management.  The discussion was moderated by Manoj Chugh, President India and SAARC, EMC Corporation.  

Commenting on the need for organizing information in a systematic manner, Prof S Sadagopan, Director, IIITB said that there was a paradigm shift of power from carrier to content and the key issue to be recognised is the importance of putting the information back to center stage.

“Decisions are not made based on information. Information has to be recognized, organized and consolidated. Information has to be living - 24/7 – only then decision will happen based on it.”

Sadagopan added that information will be a bigger industry than Information Technology (IT).  “Information will be as important as IT. Academia and industry should work hand in hand to bring information and information agenda on center stage," Sadagopan said.

Talking about the impact of intelligent infrastructure on the Indian economy especially in the rural India, Dr S Chandrashekar, Director IT, Fore School of Management highlighted the importance of consolidation of information. “Bringing intelligence into infrastructure was the biggest challenge. We have information but the trouble lies in converting the information into knowledge,” he said.

Citing examples as to how difficult it had been to predict monsoon, Chandrashekar said, “If only networks become intelligent we can predict monsoon.”  In the US, there are 1500 variables to analyse and predict monsoon while in India there are 1400 base stations we end up having only 80 variables due to lack of intelligent networks talking to each other.

No doubt there is income generation among rural households with 60 percent of women working indoors. Despite the presence of a network, we lack some type of intelligence to mentor them to generate more employment. Here, primarily, the distribution channel requires intelligence.” Transfering information to knowledge benefits economy, he said.

Further, Chandrashekar felt that the large volume of data accumulated should be used for decision making, which eventually creates a knowledge management framework.

Right kind of intelligent infrastructure not being in place, need for a course at the under graduate level, and on right to information were some of the specific points highlighted by the participants who had come from across the country.