EMC to set up 100 centres of Academic Excellence in India

EMC Corporation announced its plan to establish 100 centres of Academic Excellence in the country during the year. These centres of Academic Excellence will be set up in leading IT institutes across the country to provide students with an opportunity to learn and practice key skills in the areas of Cloud, Data Science, Analytics, IT Infrastructure and other leading technologies.

EMC through its Academic Alliance initiative will offer the technical expertise, resources, and study materials required for setting up the centers. This was announced during the EMC Academic Summit 2015 organized in Chennai.

As per an EMC Zinnov study, the private cloud industry alone in India is expected to create 100,000 jobs by 2015 from 10,000 in 2011 and the demand is unlikely to be met. The EMC Academic Alliance initiative aims to bridge the skill-gap in a rapidly changing IT environment and prepare students for better employability.

As a part of the initiative, EMC will invite leading IT institutes from across the country to collaborate and establish these academic centres of excellence. EMC will be providing training to the faculty of these institutions on a ‘no cost’ basis and access to the ‘open courses’ from the EMC Education Services. The Centre of Academic Excellence will provide students with hands on sessions exposing them to real life work environments.

This initiative plans to benefit about 50,000 students in 2015 alone and provide a ready workforce of the future.

EMC hosted the EMC Academic Summit 2015 on the 12^th & 13^th of February in Chennai. The EMC Academic Summit is the leading industry-academia forum to learn about the trends that are transforming industries, markets and organizations. This year, the Summit saw participation from more than 300 academicians including principals, directors, & head of departments from more than 150 institutes. This was followed by presentation of the Academic Awards which celebrated the achievers and contributors from EMC Academy Member Institutions for their effort in building the talent pool for the next generation platform. The Summit included EMC Technology Day which was held at the SRM University campus and saw participation of more than 3,000 students from 100 plus colleges across Tamil Nadu. The students also got together to do their bit for the ‘Clean India’ campaign by cleaning the SRM University campus

Alok Srivastava, senior director, EMC Education Services said, “Big data, cloud, mobility and analytics are the pillars of information technology for any organization which has opened new opportunities across industries. While the potential is massive - right skills, a laser-sharp focus, and a passion for continuous learning and adaptation are a must to thrive in the digital universe of tomorrow. At EMC, our initiative is to create trained professionals with new skill sets who are ready to take challenges in the area of information infrastructure, cloud, data science and analytics.”

Krishna Kant, head, EMC Academic Alliance, South Asia & Russia said, “The technology landscape in India is fast evolving guided by the megatrends of social, mobility, analytics and cloud. In order to redefine their business, IT departments will need to continuously develop skill sets that will help them keep up with innovation. The Centres of Academic Excellence will play a pivotal role in addressing this skill gap need and we are excited to partner with the leading engineering schools to address the burgeoning skills gap issue faced by the IT sector.”