North Sydney Institute to offer course in Juniper Networks products

Stuart Corner
Monday, 01 September 2008 07:05

IT Industry - Strategy

Juniper Networks has formed a partnership with North Sydney Institute to increase the number of Juniper-qualified network engineers and help enterprises and the channel combat the skills shortage.

The program is part of Juniper's global Academic Alliance Program for enterprise routing and switching designed provides on-site access to a series of routing and switching courses, including hands-on training using Juniper J-series services routers and EX enterprise switches. Two classes are being offered by the North Sydney Institute: Operating Juniper Networks' routers in the enterprise (OJRE) and Advanced Juniper Networks routing in the Enterprise (AJRE).

The institute claims to one of Australia's largest vocational education and training institutions, and a global provider of Australian education and training qualifications. It offers over 600 courses and technical and further education programs to 50,000 local and international students. It is the second Juniper Academic Alliance member in Australia, following the appointment of  RMIT University in Melbourne.

Juniper's larger rival Cisco has for some time expressed concern at what it sees is a massive global shortfall in the number of trained networking engineers. A number of training institutes in Australia are part of its training program, the Cisco Academy, but in June this year Cisco launched a number of initiatives aimed at doubling or tripling the global pool of Cisco-certified engineers over the next five years. Those announcements followed one in February of a series of initiatives in India that Cisco hoped would produce 360,000 trained network engineers in that country alone in five years. According to an IDC report on global skills, cited by Cisco, India's surging economic development alone will create a demand for 137,000 more networking professionals by 2009.