University College Cork (UCC) has become the first university in Europe to enter storage giant EMC’s Academy Programme aimed at addressing the gap in IT education in terms of storage technologies. Over 40pc of IT budgets are now spent on storage technology and over 1 million storage professionals will be needed by 2012.
“The storage market is one of the fastest growth areas of IT,” explained Tom Clancy, vice-president of EMC Education Services. “As the industry leader, EMC recognises our responsibility to educate tomorrow’s technologists and we have begun to partner with leading institutions in order to meet this demand.
“UCC is a very progressive institution that continually strives to address industry needs,” Clancy added.
The Business Information Systems (BIS) division at UCC will offer its postgraduate and undergraduate students a set of courses under Storage Design and Management curriculum covering Storage Technology Foundations (STF) and advanced subjects such as networked storage and information availability.
The curriculum offers students the ability to learn information storage and management technology from EMC.
The company says it has leveraged its skilled and experienced practicing technical and education experts to create an “open” curriculum which focuses on storage technology concepts, principles, real-life case studies and, it emphasises, is not based on specific products.
Prof Ciaran Murphy, head of BIS, commented: “BIS is committed to forging real links between academia and industry. At every stage of the four year course we mix theory and learning with practice and experience. One of our key differentiators is that we offer a six-month paid placement for our students to go out and work in the real world, putting their theory and learning into practice.
“Our involvement in the EMC Academy will be another key differentiating factor as we bring pragmatic industry knowledge into the university, giving the students a chance to learn practical skills that are needed now in industry,” Prof Murphy said.
By John Kennedy
