IT training majors eye new sectors
Companies like NIIT and Aptech are now offering specialised courses in hardware and networking, reports Venkatesh Ganesh.
Computer training companies like NIIT and Aptech, which were predominantly training army of coders for the Indian and international companies, are now training their eyes on a new training area — hardware and network training.
In a bid to meet the increasing demand in the area of hardware and networking, which involves people who can provide maintenance, support or troubleshoot PC and other IT infrastructure-related problems, companies like NIIT and Aptech are now opening new centres and specialised courses. According to research group IDC, there is a shortfall of 1 lakh professionals currently. Mumbai-based Aptech plans to set up five wholly owned centres that will train professionals in maintenance, networking and other specialised domains. Additionally, the company plans to invest between Rs 50 – 70 lakh in each of these centres.
NIIT announced its NetworkLABS, a training offering for infrastructure management aimed at students who want to make a career out of hardware or networking.
Aptech has drawn out plans for the next year.
According to its officials, the company has invested Rs 2 crores in content and marketing and plans to invest an additional Rs 5 crores in the next 12 months.
Recently, Aptech had announced plans to open 50 centres across India, on both wholly owned and franchisee models. “The requirement for hardware and networking professionals is massive in the banking & financial services, manufacturing, SMEs (small & medium enterprises), education, retail and the BPO sector,” said Pramod Khera, CEO and MD of Aptech. He added that some of the roles available to a qualified professional are PC support specialist, hardware engineer, network or a systems engineer.
“Networking PCs and providing support is increasing, considering that most companies, whether Indian or International, have to connect across different locations to share information,” said G Raghavan, President, global learning business, NIIT.
Aptech has partnered with CompTIA, a vendor independent company that certifies courses undertaken by professionals, to train students on these courses. The course has core and elective subjects, with options for CompTIA certification and the duration of each of the courses is 9 months.
According to a study undertaken by industry body MAIT, requirement for hardware and networking professionals is stated to go up to 2 million by the year 2008.
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