Chennai firm to sign pact with Anna University

Chennai-based software training and consulting company, NACE Solutions, is set to sign an agreement with the Anna University's AU-KBC research centre to offer a joint certification programme in its flagship course "� LAMP (Linux - Apache - MySQL - PHP).

The AU-KBC, located on the Madras Institute of Technology (MIT) campus of Anna University, is funded by the National Resource Centre for Free Open Source Software (NRCFOSS) to promote the free open source software movement in the country.

"We have been approached by NRCFOSS through Anna University to have a 108-hour joint certification programme in LAMP. We will be signing an MoU with AU-KBC next week, whereby we will provide the courseware and faculty besides the certification," Gopal S, chief executive officer of NACE Solutions, told mediapersons here on Thursday.

Stating that there is an increasing migration from proprietary-based software development to open source environment worldover, with around 80 per cent of top enterprises across the globe likely to switch over to open source applications by 2010, he said the company expected a student intake of not less than 1,000 for LAMP by March 2009, both from the joint certification programme and through its centres across the country.

The fee for LAMP, an alternative technology in lieu of Microsoft's .Net and Sun Microsystems' Java, is Rs 18,000.

Meanwhile, NACE Solutions opened its first company-owned training centre besides signing up four partner centres in Hyderabad today. It plans to have a centre each in all the 25 district headquarters of the state by this fiscal end.

"Our idea is to have 200 centres, each having a student intake of 250, in 10 states by this fiscal end, of which 40 would be company-owned," Gopal said, adding the company would invest Rs 20 crore, of which Rs 15 crore would be through internal resources and the rest via debt for expanding its operations, brand promotion and marketing expenses.

NACE currently has 15 centres in Tamil Nadu and eight in Bangalore.

According to him, NACE is also in the process of expanding its horizons to Dubai and Bahrain. "We are in talks with Bahrain-based business house Almazid Group to form a 70:30 joint venture for entering the Bahrain and Dubai markets shortly," he said.

According to a Nasscom survey, the demand for software professionals is expected to be 1 million by 2008 end, and 2.3 million by 2010.