Hopes to enlist universities in programme to be launched with Software Park this month

EMC TO HELP TEACH STORAGE SKILLS HERE

Hopes to enlist universities in programme to be launched with Software Park this month

Story by DON SAMBANDARAKSA

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 the 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 locating their primary data centres here as it is Asia which is providing the 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 modernise 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 government is modernised, this will create a huge demand on the storage of that data 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 programme 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 on non-computing courses.

EMC Country Manager Thada Savetsila: We don't even track the number of storage experts in Thailand, yet by 2012 one in five IT professionals will be primarily involved in storage management.

"It does not have to be EMC. It can be Hitachi or IBM. The idea is so that graduates can know the basics of technology in a data centre, compliance issues and ILM (Information Lifecycle Management)," he quickly added.

So far, 21 universities in the United States have joined the programme, 21 in China and 101 in India with over 4,000 students taking the course.

The programme 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. "India has 101 Universities, but for the first year I would be delighted if I can sign up five," he said.

However, while the course is free, formal certification will be an extra US$200 through a network of evaluation partners. EMC is also more than happy to offer further professional training courses for between 21,000 to 38,000 baht.

In the meantime, EMC is also ready to offer "resident professional services," essentially an expert that works in the client's data centre to help implement projects and train staff. Another offering is to lease storage equipment tied in with a service level agreement which is a hybrid model rather than outright outsourcing.

"I love my country. Speaking as a patriot, Thailand needs to move towards self-sustainability if we are to avoid falling down the league tables in terms of economic competitiveness," Thada said.