New Delhi: The Indian Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore (IIIT-B) has signed an agreement with EMC (Benelux) B.V. SARL, a subsidiary of Global leader in information infrastructure solutions, EMC Corporation, to offer a course in information storage technology to its second year postgraduate students from July 2007.

The introduction of the course will be through the EMC Academy Programme (EAP) in India.

As part of the programme, IIIT-B will receive vendor agnostic curriculum, course content, learning materials, faculty trainings and software simulators developed by EMC, to provide training to their students. EMC will provide programme support in terms of examination papers and sample assignments. As part of EAP, EMC has forged alliances with over 45 education institutions across India, and today, more than 1,500 students are enrolled in similar information storage and management courses across India as part of the EAP.

The Academy Programme is an initiative by EMC to work with the leading educational institutes around the world to address the emerging knowledge gap in storage technologies and developing a resource pool of trained and certified storage professionals. This is the only programme in the industry, which offers a vendor neutral, product agnostic storage technology curriculum to the students.

Commenting on the significance of the association, Professor Sadagopan, director, IIIT Bangalore, said, "There is 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. Information has to be recognised, organised and consolidated so that organisations can get maximum value out of their information. We are happy to partner with the world leader in information infrastructure. The agreement with EMC will enable our students to learn about information management and storage, one of the most significant and also the fastest growing segments with in the IT industry."

"We are confident that the partnership with EMC will help us impart best-of-breed skill and training to our students and produce industry ready graduates that are prepared to contribute to the fast growing information management and storage industry," he further added.

Elaborating on the need and success of EAP in India, Manoj Chugh, country manager, EMC India and SAARC region, said, "There is a dramatic increase in the average storage capacity in every organisation and only a marginal increase in the number of storage related IT professionals. IDC projects that information will grow at a CAGR of 57 per cent between 2006 and 2010 and APAC excluding Japan will grow 30 to 40 per cent faster than the mature economie (Source: IDC whitepaper: The Expanding Digital Universe: A Forecast of Worldwide Information Growth Through 2010.) We are proud to partner with IIIT Bangalore, one of the premier technology institutions in the country. Our partnership with IIIT Bangalore is a significant step forward towards addressing the emerging storage technology gap and developing a resource pool of trained storage professionals in the country."

On successful completion of the course, students will receive a certificate from IIIT Bangalore and EMC certifying that the student has successfully completed the program. All certified students will be better prepared to clear the EMC Associate Storage Technologist Examination, the world''s most recognized information management and storage certification exam.