One of my first interviews while in college was for a job building storage products. I clearly remember hearing a few acronyms that I didn't know.
During the interview there was one word that people kept saying over and over again. I didn't know what it meant. The more they used it, the more I thought to myself: "I need to find out what this word means".
What was the word?
Megabyte.
I found out after the interview that they were talking about disk capacity. I didn't know that disks could spin and seek, and I didn't know that their size was measured in megabytes. I'm clearly dating myself talking about disk capacities measured in megabytes, so why tell the story?
Because not much has changed.
Computer Science Education
Think about the last interview you had with a software grad. Did they know about snap copy or remote mirroring? Storage virtualization? Incremental versus full restore? For most grads this is not the case.
I received a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of New Hampshire in 1987. It was there that I learned to think about how to write software. We learned programming languages. We learned about the analysis of algorithms. We learned about CS topics like networking, operating systems, databases, graphics, and artificial intelligence. As a grad student at UNH I learned more about computer systems, processor architectures, memory, and busses.
But nothing about storage.
Some of that has changed. For example, UNH has developed a storage course, and of course they have their well-known interoperability lab.
Are universities across the world churning out storage-savvy grads at a pace that will satisfy the ever-increasing needs of the storage industry?
I've learned that the answer is a resounding "no".
At least that's what EMC believes.
EMC's Take on the Problem
I view Ed VanSickle of EMC as one of the authorities on this topic, not only at EMC, but across the industry. View Ed's 2007 paper (co-authored with several universities) here. Ed states that not only do companies like EMC need more storage-savvy employees, but so do corporations all over the world. One study, described here, estimates that over 1 million new storage jobs will be created worldwide by 2012.
If this is indeed the case, there are three sets of people out there that should take notice: (1) college students, (2) college CS/IT faculty, and (3) college admissions officers.
Are you a college student that wants one of those 1 million new jobs? Let me describe why we need you. You've already begun to manage your own digital information. This information includes music, photos, documents, calendars, and the like. You already understand that if you don't back that stuff up, you're out of luck. Now consider a company that's responsible for managing billions of times more content than what's on your laptop. It's not easy. It requires smart, educated people who are familiar with storage technologies. Become aware of the scope of the problem. All storage technologies build on the NEED for managing information.
Are you a college faculty or admissions officer that wants to attract more students to your computer science/system departments? EMC has one piece of advice: add a storage curriculum to your offerings. It's about to become a differentiator.
EMC's Academic Alliance
EMC is not standing still when it comes to addressing this problem, and has already partnered with colleges and universities who understand (a) the reality of the digital explosion, and (b) the opportunity to attract and train students on how to capitalize on this reality. EMC has designed a course on storage technology that is designed to be taught in a 15 week/45 hour semester. The course is not product-specific but is focused on storage technologies instead. EMC provides "applied learning" examples with cases studies and discussions.
My opinion: if any company is qualified to put together this type of curriculum it's EMC. I've begun studying the curriculum myself and have already learned quite a bit. It's my plan to blog my way through the courses and take the certification test. There are many students who have done the same and already ended up with jobs in the storage and IT industries.
Universities all over the world have already started to participate.
So will I.
Steve
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