Thanks to the info-tech revolution, the fifth letter of English commands awider application than its fellow vowels. The letter `e' now comes beforebusiness, commerce, entertainment and just about anything that impacts ourdaily lives--thereby rendering the entire world wired and webbed. A largenumber of educational institutions are now offering training programmes forprofessionals who have a critical role to play in this networking business.However, there is some concern about the quality of some of theseinstitutions. IT aspirants therefore need to make a fair assessment of theinstitutions before opting for a particular training programme. TheElectronics Research & Development Centre of India (ER&DCI) has thewerewithal to meet all the standards that are expected of a high quality ITtraining institution.ER&DCI was set up in Lucknow in 1993 as a statutory scientific society underthe ministry of information, government of India, with the objective ofundertaking and promoting research and development in electronics. Two yearslater, the centre was shifted to Noida, Uttar Pradesh. Today, ER&DCI has twoother units in Calcutta and Thiruvananthapuram. ER&DCI Noida has twoseparate divisions: a research wing and a training division.
The centre has now joined hands with global IT major IBM, which will be itsauthorised training partner (ATP) in India. This has helped ER&DCI to becomea centre for competency in Java, Oracle and IBM courses. As an ATP of IBM,ER&DCI is currently offering its second batch of e-business trainingprogrammes, titled the `IBM E-Business Programme'. D K Jain, senior projectmanager of the centre, justified the title of the course by revealing thatthe course module and fees are structured by IBM itself and the coursematerial is also provided by IBM. He pointed out that under the ATParrangement, the faculty for the course would all be IBM certified ortrained professionals.
The e-business programme will have four modules: Foundation (5 days);Application Development (16 days); Security and Administration (14 days);E-Commerce (5 days). The fee for this 40-day, full-time training programmeis pegged at Rs 40,000. This may be on the higher side for severalapplicants. But the programme-coordinator at the ER&DCI training centre, V KSharma, says that ``when you compare it with the fees charged by otherinstitutions for the same course, you will find that our's is lower. Foreach module that we provide in our e-business course, people elsewherecharge Rs 13,000--37,000, depending upon the module content.'' However,participants are offered the option of paying the course fees in twoinstallments of Rs 20,000 each.
The short duration of the course suggests that the participants must havesome knowledge of programming before opting for this programme. In fact, theminimum eligibility criterion for taking up the training programme is agraduate degree in any stream with proficiency in programming. The selectionis made on a first-cum-first-served basis.
In addition, ER&DCI offers a four-month full-time course on Web engineering.The course is scheduled to commence from March 6, 2000. However, only peoplewith a minimum B.E. or B. Tech. qualification are eligible for the programmefor a total course fee of Rs 40,000, also payable in two equal installments.
Copyright © 2000 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.