MS, SONET partner for online courses

HYDERABAD: Microsoft Corporation India Pvt Ltd has announced a MoU with SONET (Society for Networking for Excellence in Technical Education), a non-profit organization, which works with the Department of Technical Education for Andhra Pradesh.

Under the agreement, SONET and Microsoft India will collaboratively develop and offer online training courses, deliver technical seminars, and conduct faculty development programs for over 100 state engineering colleges in the next one year. The courses will currently be focused on .NET, Visual Studio .NET, Windows Server 2003 and some upcoming products like Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005.

Commenting on the announcement, SONET executive secretary Krishna Rao said, "Our aim is to increase access to technical education across the state of Andhra Pradesh, and to this end we have made significant investments in ensuring that we have the best infrastructure in place, including fiber optic connectivity, video tele-conferencing equipment, and a customized portal for colleges to collaborate. We are glad to partner with Microsoft to create an environment for online education and to help students learn about Microsoft products and technologies."

Commenting on the partnership, Microsoft Corporation India developer and platform evangelism director Sheila Gulati said, "With students and the academic community, our aim is to make technology and related skills easily accessible, and it's for this reason that we chose to partner with SONET. We hope that with this partnership, engineering students across Andhra Pradesh can leverage these resources and learn about new and cutting edge technologies, in step with their peers the world over."