EMC Middle East announced the successful initiation of the Annual EMC Graduate Project Competition for Middle East and Africa. Titled "Envision the Future" and sponsored by the EMC's Egyptian Center of Excellence (COE), the competition is being judged by a panel of 10 esteemed industry leaders and academicians from across the globe. The competition, which was open to senior undergraduate students from universities in Turkey, Middle East and Africa enrolled in the EMC Academic Alliance program, is aimed at sparking innovation and creativity in IT education. The EMC Graduate Project Competition was divided into five stages, kicking off with project abstract submission on Oct. 15 and has since witnessed over 65 projects from 272 participating students from across the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Morocco and Kenya. An astounding 40% of these entries were submitted by young women from across these countries Now in the semifinal stage, 30 projects have been shortlisted based on project abstract submissions that were created using only Open Source tools in areas related to cloud and social networking apps, multi-clouds and hybrid cloud, software defined data center and networks, technology for big data apps and domain specific big data applications. Shortlisted candidates will now move into the next phase of the competition with guidance from professors to put together competitive projects, which will be evaluated based on relevance, originality, significance and expected impact. Winners of the EMC Graduate Project Competition will be announced on Sept.1, 2016, and will stand a chance to win financial exciting prizes. The competition is sponsored by the EMC's Egyptian Center of Excellence (COE), which continues to focus investments in universities' program, community activities, innovation and joint-research in a bid to build and leverage a regional talent pool. Through this exercise the Egypt COE also will identify and recruit aspiring professionals as part of its growth plan to make more significant regional impact. The announcement aligns with the rapid expansion of the EMC Academic Alliance Program that has seen EMC partner with over 170 leading universities from across the region. The program offers unique, "open" curriculum-based education that is aimed at helping students bridge the gap between what they are taught in universities and the skills needed to succeed in the steadily evolving IT industry.As enterprises across the region continue to invest in third platform technologies such as cloud, social, mobile and big data to drive competitive differentiation and enhance service delivery, the EMC Academic Alliance is a first of its kind industry- academia partnership that is designed to help students acquire the education and practical skills required to manage and operate complex third platform driven infrastructure. Over the last three years, over 5,000 students across the region have availed of the courses offered as part of the EMC Academic Alliance Program on topics including virtualization, cloud computing, big data analytics, information storage and management, and data protection. The courses based on truly "open" curriculum focuses on concepts and principles applicable to any vendor environment, enabling students to develop highly marketable knowledge and skills demanded by today's evolving IT industry. In 2015, 1000 students have earned the prestigious EMC Academic Associate certification demonstrating their proficiency to potential employers, and aiding their progress to more advanced technology education courses and certifications from EMC — all designed to help fill the current shortage of skilled workers in the IT industry.
