Microsoft announces $500 million investment to empower partners

B R Ambedkar Open University signs up NIIT for IT curriculum for

Bachelor's programs in AP

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NIIT to award scholarships to meritorious GNIIT students

All India test at all NIIT Centres on July 21.

July 12, 2002, New Delhi: NIIT, the IT training pioneer in India, has announced the GNIIT scholarships for the academic year 2002-03, to help students gain competitive edge in their IT careers. This is the first time NIIT has announced a scholarship program exclusively for GNIIT, which trains on the latest technologies.

To be eligible for the scholarship, applicants need to be Class XII pass or equivalent and pursuing their graduate studies. The scholarship test will be held on July 21, 2002, at all the NIIT education centers across India.

Mr. P Rajendran, Chief Operating Officer, NIIT said, "The GNIIT scholarships will reward and recognize excellence among meritorious youth and enable them to acquire industry relevant IT skills and contribute to nation’s trained IT manpower base."

Commenting on the prospects for IT training, Mr Rajendran said that NIIT alone offers Professional Practice as part of the GNIIT program to enable students to train for one year in one of the 2000 companies making it the world’s largest industry-academia interaction program.

IT continues to offer many more promising career options than any other field. The research, encapsulated in Nasscom’s Strategic Review 2002 shows that a major short fall exists in India in the area of skilled Knowledge Workers. The statistics show that there is expected to be a shortage of nearly 530,000 IT professionals in India alone during the next four years.

While the value of scholarship will be determined by an individual’s relative performance in the entrance test, the minimum value of scholarship will be Rs 10,000.

GNIIT is a three-year program aimed at creating global IT professionals and is based on the feedback from leading corporates regarding their expectations of a complete industry-relevant IT professional ensuring that GNIITians become the first choice for every employer.

The GNIIT program is centered around three areas of learning—core concepts, software engineering and key technologies. Software engineering concepts equip students to solve real life software development problems of a diverse nature. Core Concepts strengthen the foundation and adapting to newer technologies, while Key Technologies provide with strong development and deployment skills for both desktop and mobile devices. The focus is on providing training on state-of-the-art technologies and architectures.

Microsoft announces $500 million investment to empower partners

Investment Reaffirms Commitment to Partner Success With New Resources, Marketing and Support Tools.

July 12, 2002, Los Angeles, Calif: Speaking to 3,000 partners in the opening keynote at Microsoft® Fusion 2002, the company’s premier annual partner event, Allison Watson, the new vice president of Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Sales and Marketing Group, announced plans for an additional $500 million investment in the company’s partner community starting this fiscal year, a 50 percent increase over last year’s total partner investment. The move is a renewal of Microsoft’s commitment to leadership, predictability and defined opportunity for its 810,000-member partner community.

"We are investing in people, marketing, support, tools and programs on a new level," Watson said. "As a company we can be successful only if all our partner segments are successful. We recognize the need to provide more resources for our partners, and we believe the investments we are making will have a clear impact on our mutual success."

As Microsoft strives to meet the needs of customers, it is increasing its investing to better engage the vast community of resellers, solution providers, system integrators, ISVs and developers to successfully bring solutions to market.

"Only with strong partner understanding and backing of Microsoft .NET-based technology can we provide the business agility customers need to reach their full potential," Watson said. "Enabling partners with great technology, training resources and marketing is a commitment Microsoft made 27 years ago. The economy has changed, our products have changed, and the industry has changed, but we have not wavered from that basic commitment."

The $500 million investment will begin July 2002 and will be rolled out in phases over the next two years, with the bulk of the spending coming during the next 12 months. Key components of the investment include the following:

Field staff increase. The first part of the investment will increase field staff, giving Microsoft greater ability to work directly with partners to provide the right solutions to their customers. The increase includes partner account managers, partner technical specialists and partner telesales representatives to work directly with partners and customers. It also includes a $4 million investment in training for partner account managers. "By building new and expanded field teams, Microsoft and our partners are coming together to present solutions for information worker productivity and business agility," Watson said. "If we provide and enable multiple partners across the broad technology marketplace, our customers will also have greater access and choice."

Readiness. A large percentage of the investment will support partner readiness, including the eLearning Center, a sophisticated new Web-based tool that gives partners a customizable learning path to allow them to gain the sales and technical training they want, when they want it. The eLearning Center recently launched with 11 courses; many more are planned in the next fiscal year. "As part of our readiness commitment, the eLearning Center provides partners with a self-assessment and personalized training program, giving them the training they need for top performance," Watson said.

Support. Support investments will increase the availability of Microsoft for Partners News Groups and business-critical telephone support. The Microsoft for Partners News Groups provide support professionals to answer questions about Microsoft systems and applications. The language support for these newsgroups will be expanded from English to include German, French, Spanish and Japanese. In another support offering, Microsoft will launch the Online Concierge for Certified Partners, an online service to communicate with Microsoft Technical Support administrators who will direct partners to the appropriate technical resource for specific technical situations.

Marketing. Investments in product solutions campaigns are designed to give partners a consistent way to work with Microsoft to drive sales of solutions. The campaigns will include partner readiness, integrated advertising, marketing and sales support.
Additional investment tools and resources designed to increase partner readiness, profitability and satisfaction levels will be introduced throughout the year.

B R Ambedkar Open University signs up NIIT for IT curriculum for Bachelor's programs in AP

India's first open university, Dr B R Ambedkar Open University and India's first IT training organisation, NIIT, have joined hands to offer quality computer education to over 50,000 students pursuing undergraduate programs in Andhra Pradesh. A Memorandum of Understanding to this effect was exchanged at a function held here today.

July 12, 2002, Hyderabad: Speaking on the occasion Prof V S Prasad, Vice-Chancellor, Dr B R Ambedkar Open University said, "We have christened our 20th Anniversary as the 'year of re-dedication'. We are striving to enrich our on-going academic programs by introducing skills that will assist learners in competency building and provide better employment opportunities."

"Our association with IT education pioneer, NIIT, helps us bring unmatched value to learners," he added.

As part of the 5-year exclusive agreement, NIIT, in consultation with Dr B R Ambedkar Open University, will design and conduct Computer Applications elective curriculum for 2nd and 3rd year students in the Bachelors degree programs at Dr B R Ambedkar Open University.

On clearing the examination after completing 240 hours of instruction (4 courses of 60 hours each), NIIT will award a 'Diploma of NIIT in Computer Applications' to the participants. Further, students have the option of taking up advanced IT programs at NIIT after completing all the four courses.

Mr Rajendra S Pawar, Chairman, NIIT said, "In the technology driven world the future is all about the formal and non-formal educational systems complementing and supplementing each other to meet the market needs both quantitatively and qualitatively."

The courses priced at Rs 3000 each will be delivered at nearly100 NIIT Education Centers in Andhra Pradesh. The curriculum is designed to help the students build skills in computer applications including office automation, application development, object oriented application development and web application development.

NIIT will handle the entire education delivery process including induction, education delivery, conduct of examinations and evaluations and preparation of the results for the computer application courses.

 

Under a separate agreement, NIIT will make available its education centers to students enrolled into NIIT programs who want to concurrently pursue a Bachelors degree program (B Sc, B Com, BA in Andhra Pradesh and B Com, BA in rest of the country) from Dr B R Ambedkar Open University.

"We are pleased to be partnering with a forward looking institution like Dr B R Ambedkar Open University to emerge as a single window education service provider to the students," Mr Pawar said. Dr. BR Ambedkar Open university established in Hyderabad, under APOU Act 1982 is working with the objective to democratize higher education in the state of Andhra Pradesh by taking it to the doorsteps of the learners, irrespective of their age, region or formal qualifications and delivering education at the pace and convenience of learners through an open learning system with a network of study centers of its own or of partnering institutions for the education delivery.

BRAOU is the first Open University in the country and has another first to its credit--to be the first to offer Science program through distance methodologies. The establishment of the University heralded an era of affirmative actions on the part of the government for providing opportunities of higher education to all sections of society catering to changing individual and social needs. The University has brought legitimacy to the open learning system by maintaining Quality of the learning material, wide network of delivery systems, validity of testing and evaluation process and equivalence of content and form of its programs. The University offers a range of Certificate programs, Diploma Programs, Bachelor's programs, Masters programs and Research programs.