BANGALORE – Cisco Systems has launched a program in India to train people in high-end technical skills, as well as the communication skills required to interact with customers.
The new Global Talent Acceleration Program (GTAP) compresses the training period to nine to 12 months from about three to four years usually required for CCIE (Cisco Certified Internetworking Expert) certification, John Livingston, GTAP’s program director, said in Bangalore on Thursday.
The program will train students who have professional experience as well as fresh graduates, he added. The GTAP is being introduced by Cisco in regional hubs where the demand for top quality professionals is growing. The company introduced the program last year in Johannesburg, the company’s hub for Africa, and in Amman, Jordan, a center for the Middle East market, Livingston said.
Cisco set up a globalization center in Bangalore last year, saying that it wanted to decentralize global corporate functions to locations worldwide that can be sources of talent, innovation, and also key markets for the company. The center in Bangalore is working on new products and business models for emerging markets, besides working with Indian outsourcers on product development and delivery of services to customers worldwide.
About 100 students are expected to be trained in India in the first year under the GTAP program, and most of them will be absorbed by Cisco’s technical operations in India. The training will be done jointly by Cisco and private training companies in the country.
The GTAP program is part of several initiatives by Cisco to increase the number of people with networking skills.
The company, its business partners, and customers will need to increase the staff trained on Cisco equipment to 2 million by 2013 , said Wim Elfrink, Cisco’s chief globalization officer and executive vice-president of Cisco Services. Of this staff about 80 per cent will be required by customers, 15 per cent by business partners, and five per cent by Cisco, Elfrink said. There are currently 1 million such staff available.