[18 May 2006]
SMU and Oracle launch Asia's first Enterprise Grid Architect Certification Programme in Singapore

More than of 60% organizations polled in Singapore have implemented or are likely to implement grid computing, according to the Oracle® Grid Index IV .

GRIDASIA 2006, SINGAPORE, May 18, 2006 - Oracle, the world's largest enterprise software company, and Singapore Management University (SMU) today launched the Asia Pacific region's first certification programme for Enterprise Grid Architects. The new programme will certify IT professionals to design, build and manage sophisticated enterprise grid infrastructure.

"Today's announcement of the industry's first Enterprise Grid Architect Certification Programme is testimony to Oracle's commitment to Singapore 's development as the hub for grid computing in the Asia Pacific region," said Michael Yap, Managing Director, Oracle Singapore. "The global grid market is expected to exceed US$12 billion by 2007 1 . This course will put IT professionals in good stead to help their organisations successfully adopt enterprise grid to manage costs and improve business agility."

"I am excited about this collaboration between Oracle and SMU. It is in line with IDA's objective to drive sophisticated adoption of Infocomm technologies among Infocomm professionals, allowing them to stay relevant, competitive and transform economic sectors," said Khoong Hock Yun, Assistant Chief Executive (Infrastructure and Manpower Development), Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore. "With the adoption of Grid moving into the commercial space, I am confident that the Enterprise Grid Architect Certification Programme will sufficiently equip Infocomm professionals with certifications for critical and essential skills demanded by the industry."

The Enterprise Grid Architect Certification Programme by SMU is a pioneering certification standard that endorses capabilities of IT professionals to design and manage the creation of enterprise grid computing environments. SMU will target to certify 60 IT professionals as enterprise grid architects over the next three years. This programme curriculum is offered by SMU's School of Information Systems.

"Grid or utility computing is one of the cornerstone strategies employed by organizations to optimize their computational resources and to enable service-oriented computing. In this certification course, we will cover the foundational principles of designing, architecting and deploying grid based applications, allowing participants to start incorporating these emergent techniques into the application infrastructure of their organizations," said Professor Steven Miller, Dean, School of Information Systems, Singapore Management University. "For the new academic year, SMU's School of Information Systems will also be introducing a longer version of this course for SMU undergraduates as part of their Information Systems Management degree programme. Knowledge of grid computing will be a valuable asset in their training to be a new breed of business-oriented IT professionals who have depth in both business analysis and IT solutions design."

Singapore Sees Growth in Grid Computing

Singapore appears to be ahead of Southeast Asia in the adoption of grid computing, according to preliminary results in the Oracle® Grid Index 2 IV report, to be released in June 2006. The report reveals that more than 60% of organizations polled in Singapore have implemented or are likely to implement grid computing, compared to 50% in Southeast Asia . Additionally, Singapore results show its Adoption Index at 3.2, compared to 3.0 for Southeast Asia.

"This analysis indicates that organizations in Singapore see grid computing as a key consideration in its strategic business systems," said Yap. "Organizations need to have the most flexible, adaptive and extensible business model - grid computing can become a key advantage for them.

"With the commencement of the Enterprise Grid Architect Certification Programme, IT professionals can take immediate action to derive benefit from the course. This in turn benefits organizations in the form of better usage of current IT assets and this will better position both organizations and Singapore in this highly competitive landscape."

On the overall Grid Index scale, Singapore is on par with Southeast Asia at 5.9 on the 10-point scale.

Moving forth on Enterprise-g MAnpower Programme (g-MAP)

This innovative certification programme is part of Oracle's commitment to drive adoption of enterprise grid in Singapore . Announced in May 2005, Oracle and the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) launched g -MAP - the Enterprise- g MA npower P rogramme - to drive development of enterprise grid capabilities and to introduce an enterprise grid computing architect programme. g -MAP, which is under the scope of the 3-year IDA-Oracle Enterprise- g @ Singapore collaboration announced in July 2004, delivers enterprise grid computing training at three levels: student, administrator and architect to progressively scale up the skills and abilities of individuals to understand, operate, implement and eventually design and manage enterprise grid computing projects. (Please click here for details about g -MAP)

Programme Overview

The Enterprise Grid Architect Certification Programme is a combination of lectures and practical sessions throughout a five-day period. The key components of this programme include discussions on virtualization and utility computing covering the various layers of the virtualization stack with a focus on application layer grids, theories and designs for application grids and workshops for creating application grids using Oracle 10g software. For each Certification programme intake, it will be limited to a select group of 15 to 20 IT professionals.

The Enterprise Grid Architect Certification Programme will be delivered by Dr Anindya Datta, Visiting Associate Professor at SMU who is an expert in application virtualization. Entry to this certification programme is only for IT enterprise architects and data centre managers with an interest in exploiting Grid technology for their business needs. Participants will be selected by SMU for their experience in scaling and managing performance of enterprise applications, as well as in managing IT budgets for enterprise infrastructure.

The certification programme will commence in June 2006. IT professionals keen to undertake this certification programme can contact SMU's School of Information Systems for application details.

Following this Enterprise Grid Architect Certification Programme, SMU plans to expand on their Bachelor of Science (Information Systems Management) degree programme with a course on enterprise grid architecture. Tentatively, the undergraduate course will be known as "Grid Architecture for Enterprise Applications". Dr Datta will be conducting that undergraduate course as well. This course will commence in the new academic year.

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1 Source: Role of Grid Computing in the Coming Innovation Wave (IDC #30871), March 2004.

2 The Oracle Grid Index research maps the world's journey to Grid Computing based on three underlying indices: Foundation Readiness, Knowledge & Interest and Adoption Lifecycle.