In a bid to boost IT talent in India, Cisco has today announced a series of initiatives to expand the country's capacity to train, employ, and retain highly qualified networking and systems engineers.

The company is nurturing high-flying ambitions to expand the country's networking workforce capacity to nearly 360,000 engineers within the next five years, which would translate into a six-fold increase over present employment levels. This it plans to do by establishing partnerships and starting testing facilities.

As part of its initiatives, Cisco has announced two of the country's largest technology training organizations -- NIIT and IIHT -- as becoming Cisco Certified Learning Solutions Partners. As such, they now join Global Knowledge and Training Partner, a business unit of Datacraft India, in offering a complete range of authorized Cisco training materials and certifications to students and professionals in over 200 locations throughout the country.

Speaking on the occasion, Leo Scrivner, vice president (Human Resources) of Cisco Services and Globalization Center East, said, "Globalization will continue to transform India's economy, and will require its young workforce to develop skills that are market-driven. The launch of our talent-development initiative in India underscores Cisco's commitment to expand access to the IT training and certification resources that will support the country's continued economic growth."

Keshava Raju, chief executive officer of IIHT, said, "IIHT has an impeccable track record of conducting training in networking and IT infrastructure for the last 15 years, and we are excited to be working with Cisco to expand opportunity and access to quality training to help address India's national skills shortage."

G Raghavan, president (Individual Learning Solutions) of NIIT, said, "Significant talent shortages in sectors such as infrastructure management have opened up multiple career options for aspiring students and professionals. We are happy to unite with Cisco to develop talent in the Asia Pacific region."

In conjunction with the new initiatives, Cisco is mulling a major push towards increasing access to its examination facilities through its primary test-delivery partner, Pearson VUE. Cisco plans to add 150 testing facilities across India by end this year to meet these new requirements. Pearson VUE will also deploy mobile testing centers to increase access to technology in rural and under-served areas.

For more information on Cisco's certification program, go to:Cisco Initiatives