Date:10/02/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/02/10/stories/2008021056131300.htm

National

Talent development strategy for India

Special correspondent

Cisco’s certified learning solutions for systems engineers

IIHT, NIIT to become Cisco’s training partners
Cisco’s plan to add 150 testing facilities

CHENNAI: Despite the sudden move towards pay and job cuts in a section of the IT sector, Cisco has announced a series of country-specific initiatives aimed at expanding India’s capacity to train, employ and retain highly qualified networking and systems engineers.

It will establish partnerships and open testing facilities to expand networking workforce capacity to 360,000 engineers in the next five years, a six-fold increase over present employment levels, according to a company press release.

The release noted that a recent IDC report on global skills, India’s surging economic development will create a demand for 137,000 more networking professionals by 2009.

Training initiative

As an integral part of the training-development initiative, Cisco announced that two of India’s largest technologies training organisations, IIHT and NIIT, have become Cisco Certified Learning Solutions Partners.

With this development, both these institutions join Global Knowledge and Training Partner Ltd., a business unit of Datacraft India, in offering the complete range of authorised Cisco training materials and certifications to students and professionals in more than 200 locations throughout the country.

Further, Cisco is also moving towards increasing access to its examination facilities through its primary test-delivery partner, Pearson VUE, the release added. The company plans to add 150 testing facilities that meet these new requirements across India by the end of the year.

To further close the digital divide, Pearson VUE will also deploy several mobile testing centers to increase access to technology in rural and under-served areas.